UNA   MARY 

THE  INNER  LIFE  OF  A  CHILD 


UNA  MARY 

THE   INNER   LIFE  OF  A   CHILD 


BY 

UNA    HUNT 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
1914 


COPYRIGHT,  1914,  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  September,  1914 


TO 
MY  FATHER  AND  MOTHER 


324948 


PREFACE 

THIS  is  the  true  story  of  the  inner  life  of  my 
childhood.  It  is  the  story  of  the  life  of  any 
imaginative  child,  differing  from  others  only  in 
details  of  the  material  which  came  my  way  and 
from  which  I  built  my  life,  my  friendships,  my 
world,  and  my  beliefs — with  the  needs  felt  by 
every  sensitive  child,  the  same  searching  for  an 
explanation  of  life  and  the  universe  and  the  same 
hunger  for  a  religion  through  which  to  become 
part  of  what  I  saw  and  felt,  to  link  me  with  the 
known  and  the  unknown,  the  unseen  mystery  of 
which  a  child  is  so  acutely  conscious  and  which 
I  felt  pressing  in  upon  me  from  every  side. 

The  life  of  Una  Mary  ended  when  I  was  four 
teen  years  old.  It  was  hardly  a  case  of  dual  per 
sonality.  I  did  not  feel  that  I  was  two  people. 
She  was  the  rest  of  me,  the  deep,  inner,  real  part 
that  no  one  else  seemed  to  know  was  there;  the 
part  of  me  that  felt,  felt  with  an  intensity  that 
was  almost  pain,  a  dumb  ache  of  emotion. 

The  outward  surroundings  and  circumstances 
as  I  have  used  them  are  partly  real,  partly  imag- 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

inary,  and  very  often  adapted  to  conceal  the  iden 
tity  of  other  people  who  were  part  of  my  life  but 
might  not  care  to  have  me  trespass  on  their  per 
sonalities.  I  have  changed  all  the  names  except 
my  own  and  have  taken  liberties  with  many  of 
the  places  and  events,  but  in  every  case  I  have 
kept  the  essential  truth  of  their  relation  to  my  life 
and  their  influence  upon  the  mind  of  Una  Mary. 
All  that  concerns  her,  everything  that  is  descrip 
tive  of  Una  and  the  Imp,  my  kaleidoscopic  ideas 
about  religion,  and  my  imaginary  existence  with 
Edward  in  My  Country,  I  have  told  with  absolute 
literalness,  and  have  tried,  in  doing  so,  to  give 
some  vague  idea  of  chronological  development, 
though  to  avoid  confusion  it  seemed  simpler  to 
arrange  the  book  roughly,  according  to  subjects; 
therefore  many  ideas  and  beliefs  that  were  emerg 
ing  at  the  same  time  are  necessarily  described  in 
separate  chapters. 

My  one  object  in  writing  has  been  the  hope 
that  some  of  my  readers  might  say,  "I  remember 
I  felt  so,  too,"  the  hope  that  they  might  become 
vividly  conscious  of  their  own  half-forgotten  points 
of  view  as  children,  with  their  tragedies,  bewil 
derments,  and  joys. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  FROM  THE  BEGINNING  TO  CHRISTMAS    ....  i 

II.  UNA  MARY  AND  THE  IMP 19 

III.  GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS 36 

IV.  CERTAIN  GAPS  IN  MY  INFORMATION     ....  54 
V.  MY  COUNTRY 64 

VI.  FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA 84 

VII.  THE  UNKNOWN  POWER 101 

VIII.  UNA'S  TASTE  AND  UNA  MARY'S  WONDER  .     .     .  117 

IX.  SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA 134 

X.  MAMMY 154 

XI.  MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN 177 

XII.  SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP 200 

XIII.  THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED 218 

XIV.  WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD 235 

XV.  THE  SOLUTION 254 


UNA   MARY 

CHAPTER    I 
FROM   THE   BEGINNING   TO   CHRISTMAS 

T  WISH,  as  far  as  I  am  able,  to  write  the  inner 
-*-  imaginative  and  religious  life  of  my  childhood, 
beginning  with  my  earliest  memories.  This  was 
the  part  of  my  life  of  which  I  spoke  to  no  one 
until  after  I  was  nine  years  old,  but  of  which  I 
was  always  conscious  with  an  intensity  that  at 
times  made  my  outer  life  seem  a  dream  and  this 
the  only  reality,  in  which  I  grouped  and  arranged 
all  that  was  most  precious  to  me,  and  from  the  com 
binations  worked  out  successive  theories  of  the 
meaning  of  life  and  beauty,  of  God,  and  the  rela 
tion  of  these  elusive  feelings  to  the  spirit  within 
myself  that  I  felt  was  the  Real  Me  and  named 
Una  Mary  to  distinguish  her  from  my  outer  self, 
named  Una. 

Like  every  child,  I  was  'conscious  of  the  special 
personality  of  all  objects,  making  them  terrible  or 
lovable,  and  responsive  to  me,  but  more  than  that, 


2  UNA  MARY 

I,  Una  Mary,  was  part  of  them;  I  understood  them 
as  themselves,  and  we  were  altogether  parts  of 
some  vast,  unseen  whole,  all  symbols  of  an  infinite 
greatness  just  beyond  my  grasp.  I  felt  it  in  the 
ache  of  beauty,  in  the  wild  power  of  the  wind  and 
sea,  in  the  brooding  mystery  of  mountains,  in  a 
star-clear  night,  in  the  joy  of  running  water,  in  the 
miracle  of  flowers,  in  the  Presence-haunted  forest, 
in  the  pulse  of  great  cities,  in  the  dauntlessness  of 
ships,  and,  above  all,  in  the  radiance  of  certain 
human  faces.  I  had  been  at  the  heart  of  them  all, 
but  our  hearts  were  the  heart  of  something  greater, 
and  we  had  known  each  other  and  this  Some 
thing,  and  been  interrelated  from  all  time.  Of 
course  the  full  consciousness  of  this  did  not  come  to 
me  as  a  small  child,  yet  I  never  remember  the 
time  when  it  was  not  in  some  measure  present. 

As  I  look  back  I  first  find  myself  standing  on 
the  porch  of  the  house  we  lived  in  until  I  was  two 
and  a  half  years  old.  I  stood  between  the  piazza. 
posts  facing  Mamma,  some  strange  old  lady  dressed 
in  black  with  a  large  lace  cap,  and  Lizzie,  the 
cook,  all  of  them  horrified  because  I  had  just 
swallowed  an  orange  seed.  I  felt  it  prick  as  it 
went  down,  and  then,  when  I  saw  how  frightened 
the  others  were,  I  had  my  face  puckered  up  ready 
to  howl  with  terror,  the  tears  beginning  to  stream 
down  my  cheeks,  when  I  was  arrested  by  hearing 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  3 

Lizzie  say,  "I  wonder  if  it  will  grow  inside  her?" 
and  I  winked  back  the  tears  at  once,  entranced  at 
the  thought  of  myself  as  a  flower-pot.  I  have  no 
idea  what  happened  next;  the  picture  is  blurred 
out,  for  always  my  memories  are  pictures.  I  see 
the  whole  scene,  the  grouping  and  expressions  of 
the  people,  and  I  even  know  how  all  of  them  are 
dressed.  I  wore  a  blue  coat  with  white  pearl  but 
tons  the  day  the  seed  went  down. 

The  next  scene  that  comes  to  me  must  have 
been  a  few  weeks  later,  when  we  were  moving  into 
our  new  house.  I  sat  on  a  table  in  the  pantry 
watching  Mamma  and  Lizzie  arrange  the  china  on 
the  shelves.  There  were  an  iron  mortar  and  pestle 
which  I  had  never  seen  before,  as  they  always  lived 
on  the  top  shelf,  and  it  seemed  to  me  very  pathetic, 
after  such  an  exclusive  existence,  that  they  should 
have  to  travel  over  in  a  moving  van,  jumbled  to 
gether  with  all  the  common  kind  of  lower-shelf 
crockery.  I  felt  very  sorry  for  the  mortar  and 
pestle,  and  kept  them  beside  me  where  I  could 
pat  and  comfort  them.  Then,  when  the  whole 
pantry  was  in  order,  I  watched  Lizzie,  who  stood 
on  the  step-ladder,  carefully  put  them  in  their 
proper  place  on  the  top  shelf  where  I  could  no 
longer  see  them — a  retreat  worthy  of  their  dignity. 
Afterward  I  insisted  upon  being  present  when  they 
were  taken  down  for  the  yearly  pickling  and  pre- 


4  UNA  MARY 

serving,  that  opulent  week  when  the  whole  house 
and  even  out  to  the  sidewalk  smelled  of  aromatic 
deliciousness,  all  made  possible  by  the  pounding 
of  the  pestle  in  the  mortar.  They  seemed  to  me 
the  king  and  queen  of  the  preserves,  and  much 
more  to  be  thanked  than  Lizzie  for  the  sticky  joys 
of  the  large  spoon  I  was  allowed  to  "scrape"  after 
the  stirring  of  each  kettle  of  jam. 

One  morning  about  six  weeks  later  I  was  playing 
alone  in  the  kitchen — it  impressed  me  because  I 
had  almost  never  been  alone  before — when  Papa 
called  me  to  come  up-stairs.  As  I  toiled  up  the 
stairs,  which  were  still  quite  a  mountain  for  me 
to  climb,  stepping  up,  as  I  did,  with  one  foot  and 
hitching  the  other  up  after  it,  Papa,  who  stood  at 
the  top,  told  me  to  come  quickly  and  see  my  sister 
who  had  just  been  born.  He  seemed  greatly 
pleased  and  excited,  but  I  was  quite  calm,  only 
so  surprised  that  nothing  seemed  real.  I  stood 
still  on  the  next  to  the  top  step,  holding  on  to  the 
banister,  trying  to  believe  it  was  true,  until  Papa 
leaned  over,  took  me  in  his  arms,  and  kissed  me 
as  he  carried  me  into  Mamma's  room.  I  was 
sorry  to  find  Mamma  sick  in  bed,  but  she  looked 
very  happy  in  spite  of  it,  and  after  I  had  kissed 
her,  "very  careful,"  as  Papa  told  me  to,  he  uncov 
ered  the  basket  in  front  of  the  open  fire  over  which 
Lizzie  and  a  strange  woman  were  hovering,  and  in 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  5 

it  I  saw  a  queer  little  squirming  red-faced  creature 
that  they  said  was  the  baby,  my  sister!  I  was  never 
so  disappointed  in  my  life,  and  went  back  to  the 
kitchen  to  cry  because  she  was  so  ugly. 

As  she  grew  older  other  people  seemed  to  think 
she  was  a  very  pretty  baby,  but  she  was  not  my 
idea  of  beauty,  and  my  only  consolation  about  her 
was  that  now  everybody  kissed  her  dimples  in 
stead  of  mine — the  ones  in  a  row  along  the  back  of 
her  hand.  I  had  hated  it.  On  my  hands,  instead 
of  the  dimples,  they  now  only  noticed  the  mole 
on  the  little  finger  of  my  left  hand,  which  they 
said  was  a  pity,  but  I  might  outgrow  it.  I  hoped 
not,  for  I  was  very  fond  of  the  mole.  It  looked 
to  me  like  the  stone  in  a  ring,  giving  that  finger 
an  air  of  extreme  elegance,  and  I  used  to  hold  my 
cup,  when  I  drank,  with  the  little  finger  crooked 
out  as  I  had  seen  a  much-beringed  lady  hold  hers. 
And  besides,  without  it,  if  the  two  looked  exactly 
alike,  how  could  I  ever  tell  my  right  hand  from 
my  left? 

With  the  next  thing  I  remember  came  for  the 
first  time  that  over-feeling  of  a  something  beyond 
and  more  than  the  thing  itself,  the  personality  that 
was  part  of  something  greater.  It  was  the  first 
of  those  deep,  vague  feelings  which  made  up  the 
life  of  Una  Mary,  and  it  was  on  that  day  that  my 
inner  life  began,  although  it  was  not  until  a  year 


6  UNA  MARY 

later  that  I  gave  the  name  of  Una  Mary  to  my 
Inner  Self,  the  self  who  seemed  so  apart  from  the 
Una  who  was  just  a  member  of  a  family,  so  dif 
ferent  from  the  me  our  friends  saw  and  talked  to, 
who  played  with  toys,  sat  on  people's  laps,  and 
"took  walks,"  dragged  about  the  streets  by  the 
nurse  who  wheeled  my  sister's  carriage ;  and,  above 
all,  who  wore  the  clothes  I  hated,  of  dark  blue  or 
brown,  because  they  "did  not  show  the  soot  like 
white."  My  clothes  were  so  unlike  me,  so  unlike 
the  person  I  felt  I  was  inside,  and  made  me  look 
so  unlike  myself,  to  myself,  that  I  think  they  were 
one  of  the  main  reasons  for  my  inventing  Una 
Mary.  I  had  to  be  some  one  unlike  the  child 
who  wore  them. 

This  next  thing  was  in  itself  a  curious  object 
to  impress  a  child  of  three.  I  can  still  feel  the 
shiver  of  awe  that  went  through  me  that  summer 
afternoon,  when  I  saw  outlined  against  a  hot  blue 
sky,  the  intense  dry  blue  that  only  the  sky  of  the 
Middle  West  can  produce,  two  large  gas  tanks 
painted  red.  It  was  partly,  I  think,  the  sudden 
rousing  of  my  color  sense  in  response  to  the  pos 
itive  shout  of  the  contrast  of  the  red  against  the 
blue — strong  color  has  always  thrilled  me — but 
more  than  that  I  felt  a  sense  of  silent  strength 
and  reserve  power,  a  feeling  of  inevitableness  that 
I  have  felt  ever  since  in  large,  simple  masses  of 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  7 

construction.  I  feel  it  always  with  tanks,  often 
when  I  see  great  office  buildings,  and  sometimes 
it  grips  me  when  I  see  the  girders  of  a  bridge  out 
lined  black  against  the  sky  or  the  slow-moving 
arm  of  an  immense  derrick  swinging,  heavy-laden 
and  serene,  above  a  hurrying  swarm  of  workmen. 
They  all  seem  the  embodiment  of  something  tre 
mendous  and  relentless,  and  I  feel  the  sort  of  fear 
many  people  feel  during  a  thunder-storm,  fear  of 
a  power  beyond  my  understanding  or  control,  and 
with  the  fear  there  is  exultation  in  its  very  strength. 

All  this  did  not  come  to  me,  of  course,  that  first 
afternoon.  I  often  saw  the  tanks  afterward,  and 
the  sensation  they  gave  me  gradually  became 
clearer  and  more  conscious,  but  I  shall  never  for 
get  my  first  sight  of  them,  when  a  feeling  of  over 
whelming  loneliness  swept  over  me,  and  the  way 
in  which,  although  I  knew  he  could  not  under 
stand,  I  tightened  my  grasp  on  my  father's  hand 
to  assure  myself  that  protection  was  near.  I  felt 
it  as  Una  Mary,  because  it  was  something  I  could 
not  explain,  could  not  tell  any  one  about,  could 
only  feel,  and  feel  it,  I  was  sure,  as  no  one  else 
could. 

Whether  I  was  told  they  were  filled  with  some 
thing  that  might  explode,  or  whether  it  was  be 
cause  of  the  similarity  of  shape  and  color,  I  cannot 
tell,  but  always  after  the  next  Fourth  of  July  I 


8  UNA  MARY 

associated  them  with  cannon  crackers,  the  largest 
and  most  awful  form  of  the  ordinary  fire-cracker, 
and  felt  that  the  tanks  might  be  a  gigantic  night 
mare  of  the  same  shattering  confusion,  ready  at 
any  moment  to  burst  their  quiet  red  cylinders. 

The  following  summer  a  tornado  swept  through 
the  town  where  we  were  staying,  and  as  I  watched 
from  the  windows  and  saw  the  great  elm  trees  that 
surrounded  the  house  bend  like  blown  grass,  their 
tortured  branches  snapped  off  like  leaves,  or  whole 
trees  uprooted  and  flung  aside  as  lightly  as  if  they 
had  been  weeds,  I  had  again  the  feeling  the  gas 
tanks  had  given  me,  except  that  this  time  there 
was  less  fear  and  more  exultation.  I  clapped  my 
hands  and  shouted  with  excitement,  and  then  be 
came  more  excited  still,  but  silent,  as  I  realized 
that  I  could  not  hear  my  own  voice,  the  noise  of 
the  destruction  outside  was  so  terrific,  the  very 
soul  of  power  seemed  let  loose — power,  the  tre 
mendous,  invisible  something  that  all  my  life -has 
fascinated  and  perplexed  me,  which  I  am  always 
trying  to  confine  in  some  embodiment  to  bring 
it  within  the  control  of  my  imagination,  power 
that  cannot  even  be  described  and  so  brought 
within  the  boundaries  of  fixed  words.  I  felt  less 
afraid  of  the  tornado  than  I  had  of  the  tanks,  be 
cause  in  the  storm  the  power  was  more  obvious. 
It  seemed  to  be  doing  what  must  be  its  worst.  I 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  9 

could  see  its  full  strength  let  loose.  This  same 
tumult  of  destruction  I  felt  was  bottled  up  inside 
the  tanks,  but  in  them,  with  their  deadly  stillness 
and  immobility,  there  might  be  much  more  be 
sides.  There  seemed  no  limit  to  their  possibilities 
for  danger. 

All  the  memories  connected  with  the  Una  Mary 
side  of  me  are  either  shot  darkly  with  this  un 
known  terror  or  lit  by  an  unearthly  glamour  of 
beauty  and  suggestion  of  enchantment  which  I 
felt,  for  the  first  time,  on  the  Christmas  eve  when 
I  was  three  years  old  and  saw  my  first  Christmas 
tree.  Whatever  we  discard  in  our  theories  about 
children,  I  hope  we  may  always  keep  the  Christ 
mas  tree,  that  every  one  may  have  the  memory 
of  this  miracle  of  childlike  beauty,  this  supreme 
creation  of  genius,  in  that  it  is  the  embodiment  of 
all  a  child  can  feel,  brimming  over  with  wonder 
and  bursting  joy,  of  the  very  soul  of  toys  and 
fairy-land. 

Mine  was  at  the  house  of  the  German  consul. 
He  and  his  wife  were  young  people  recently  mar 
ried,  and  this  tree  celebrated  their  first  Christmas 
in  America,  and  so  it  was  all  a  perfect  German  tree 
should  be.  We  were  the  only  people  asked  to  it, 
my  parents,  Agnes,  and  I.  I  can  see  the  room 
still,  in  a  typical  rented  suburban  house,  new  and 
tasteless,  with  stiff  black-walnut  furnishings,  all 


io  UNA  MARY 

throwing  more  strongly  into  relief  the  glory  of  the 
marvellous  glittering  tree  towering  to  the  ceiling, 
shining  with  threads  of  fine-spun  gold,  wreathed 
with  chains  and  festoons  of  red  and  silver,  hung 
with  iridescent  balls  of  gleaming  metallic  colors, 
with  long  icicles  and  toys  and  silver  stars,  and 
at  the  very  top  a  snowy  angel  blowing  on  a  tiny 
trumpet.  Then  my  father  and  the  consul  began 
to  light  the  candles.  Real  living  flames,  one  by 
one  they  quivered  into  being  like  stars  that  are 
born  at  twilight,  until  the  whole  tree  shimmered 
and  breathed  with  their  beauty. 
/Of  course  children  believe  in  fairies  and  radiant, 
half-seen  presences,  and  they  always  will  as  long 
as  we  give  them  Christmas  treesN  As  I  sat  at  the 
foot  of  this  personification  of  all  enchantment,  all 
beauty,  and  all  dreams,  I  felt  as  if  a  spirit  had 
been  called  into  being  before  my  very  eyes,  as  the 
children  in  the  fairy-tales  must  feel  when  the  fairy 
with  the  magic  wand  appears,  and  I  burst  into 
tears,  not  because  I  was  afraid,  but  because  I 
could  not  bear  the  ache  of  all  it  meant  to  me. 

To  comfort  me,  my  Wonder  Lady,  as  I  after 
ward  called  the  consul's  wife,  took  from  the  tree 
a  gilded  walnut,  which  she  gave  me,  telling  me  to 
pull  the  loop  of  ribbon  that  made  its  stem.  As  I 
did  so  the  two  halves  flew  apart,  and  there  inside, 
on  beds  of  pale-blue  cotton,  lay  two  tiny  dolls. 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  n 

Could  any  one  have  been  dull  to  the  charm  of 
that — two  real  little  dolls  as  the  kernel  of  a  magic 
nut!  It  was  like  the  Wonder  Lady  to  give  it  to 
me  to  quiet  my  tears.  She  always  understood  Una 
Mary.  A  real  toy  or  an  ordinary  doll  would  have 
tumbled  me  to  earth  too  suddenly,  but  the  magic 
golden  nut  with  its  dolls  of  unmistakable  china 
was  the  one  perfect  link  between  the  tree  and  me, 
the  one  thing  that  could  make  the  glamour  real  and 
tangible  enough  to  belong  to  me  and  yet  no  less 
marvellous  and  beautiful. 

Afterward  we  went  home  through  a  snow-storm 
just  as  the  street  lamps  were  being  lit.  I  had 
never  seen  them  before,  and  as  I  saw  the  lamp 
lighter  put  up  his  little  ladder,  light  the  lamp, 
'and  almost  with  the  click  of  its  closing  door  run  off 
to  light  the  next,  I  felt  as  if  the  whole  city  was  a 
Christmas  tree  with  the  lamps  for  its  candles, 
and  I  longed  to  hang  presents  for  everybody  on 
the  lamp-posts. 

I  loved  the  whirling  snow,  the  orange  lights 
cast  on  the  whiteness,  and,  above  all,  the  moving 
shadows,  especially  the  one  of  Papa  with  me  in 
his  arms,  that  crept  long  and  thin  ahead  of  us 
until  something  frightened  it,  when  back  it  scut 
tled  and  squatted  down  at  our  very  feet. 

As  Mamma  put  me  to  bed  that  night  she  told 
me  about  Santa  Claus  and  read  me  "The  Night 


12  UNA  MARY 

before  Christmas" — a  poem  sacred  to  many  of 
my  most  precious  memories.  Then  we  all  hung 
up  our  stockings  around  the  fireplace  in  Mamma's 
room,  and,  sure  enough,  in  the  morning  they  were 
filled  and  overflowing  in  piles  on  the  floor  with 
presents  for  all  of  us,  proving  that  the  poem  had 
been  true  and  Santa  Claus  really  had  come  down 
the  chimney  and  galloped  away  with  a  much  light 
ened  sleigh.  And  when  I  went  down-stairs  to  wish 
Lizzie  a  Merry  Christmas,  there,  on  the  kitchen 
table,  stood  a  statue  of  Santa  Claus  himself,  the 
snow  still  sprinkled  over  him  and  in  his  arms  a 
small  Christmas  tree,  so  I  knew  that  the  marvel 
lous  tree  of  the  day  before  had  come  from  him, 
top.  It  had  seemed  too  beautiful  for  the  earth. 
[  Christmas  became  the  great  day  of  the  year, 
the  day  all  the  other  days  seemed  merely  shadows 
of,  and  Santa  Claus  was  its  spirit,  the  only  person 
I  associated  with  Christmas,  for  it  was  not  until  I 
was  nine  A^ears  old  that  I  heard  it  was  Christ's 
birthday.  ^ 

I  got  Lizzie  to  write  letters  to  Santa  Claus  for 
me,  asking  for  everything  I  wanted,  from  a  brother 
to  a  toy  broom,  and  the  year  my  youngest  sister 
was  born  I  wrote  to  him  at  once  to  tell  him  of 
her  arrival,  and  at  Christmas  the  presents  in  and 
below  her  minute  sock,  all  of  them  labelled  cor 
rectly  with  her  name,  I  looked  upon  as  a  personal 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  13 

achievement,  for  no  one  else  had  remembered  to 
tell  Santa  Glaus  about  her. 

I  always  drew  three  large  kisses  at  the  bottom 
of  the  page  and  signed  the  letters  "Una  Mary." 
I  felt  Santa  Glaus  would  understand  letters  from 
her  better  than  he  possibly  could  from  Una,  for 
it  was  Una  Mary  who  loved  his  Christmas  tree 
and  who  dreamed  off  in  his  sleigh.  Each  night 
before  going  to  sleep  I  used  to  say: 

"Santa  Glaus,  Santa  Claus, 
Send  your  sleigh 
And  Una  Mary  whisk  away." 

Then  I  imagined  myself  sitting  in  it,  the  reindeer 
pulling  faster  and  faster  over  the  snow,  until  we 
rose  up  in  the  air  over  the  housetops,  flying  up, 
up,  and  then  I  was  asleep — always  I  was  asleep 
before  I  got  high  enough  to  find  out  where  Santa 
Claus  lived,  whether  it  was  behind  a  cloud  or  up 
in  the  moon.  Perhaps  he  was  the  Man  in  the 
Moon  except  at  Christmas,  smiling  down  on  the 
world  by  night  and  busy  making  our  presents  by 
day. 

Once,  when  I  said  I  hated  a  certain  toy,  Lizzie 
told  me  I  ought  to  be  very  thankful  for  everything 
I  had  as  there  were  a  great  many  children  who  had 
no  toys  at  all.  Instead  of  making  me  thankful 
it  roused  all  my  sense  of  injustice.  I  could  not 


i4  UNA  MARY 

bear  the  thought  of  those  other  children;  it  seemed 
so  unfair  that  they  should  have  no  toys.  It  must 
be  because  Santa  Claus  did  not  know  about  them; 
so  each  night  afterward,  as  soon  as  I  had  called 
for  his  sleigh,  I  really  prayed  to  him  and  implored 
him,  between  Christmases,  to  be  sure  and  find 
the  names  and  addresses  of  all  the  children  there 
were  so  that  no  one  should  ever  be  left  out  again. 

Perhaps  Santa  Claus  is  as  good  a  preparation 
as  a  child  can  have  for  God.  I  know  they  were 
real  prayers  I  prayed  to  him. 

The  Wonder  Lady  played  an  important  part 
in  my  life  for  the  next  five  years — she  was  so  at 
heart  a  child  herself.  In  a  cabinet  in  her  parlor 
there  were  some  china  dogs  and  a  little  tub  in 
which  I  was  allowed  to  wash  them  with  make- 
believe  water — just  the  sort  of  things  to  put  in 
a  cabinet,  it  seemed  to  me — and  I  cared  for  them 
more  than  for  any  of  my  own  toys,  except  a  stick 
on  which  some  one  had  carved  for  my  mother  the 
head  of  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain.  They 
appealed  particularly  to  Una  Mary,  who  did  not 
care  much  for  regular  toys. 

The  Wonder  Lady  had  several  children  of  her 
own  during  those  years,  but  she  still  kept  a  place 
forme,  and  each  time  she  came  back  from  Ger 
many,  where  they  spent  the  summers  in  a  castle 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  15 

in  the  Black  Forest — I  was  sure  it  was  the  cas 
tle  where  Grimm's  Princesses  used  to  live — she 
brought  me  a  wonderful  present.  Once  it  was  a 
sash  from  Algiers,  striped  in  the  softest  living 
colors  of  raw  silk.  I  was  only  allowed  to  wear 
it  on  rare  occasions,  but  I  used  to  love  to  open  the 
drawer  where  it  was  kept  and  stroke  its  clinging 
smoothness.  I  have  it  still  and  am  glad  to  know 
that  I  felt  it  was  beautiful  even  then. 

Another  year  she  brought  me  a  necklace  of 
cloudy  amber,  fine,  round,  graduated  beads,  and 
in  one  of  them  there  was  a  speck  which,  when  I 
examined  it,  proved  to  be  a  tiny  fly.  Papa  told 
me  that  amber  had  been  the  gum  of  a  tree  at  the 
time  when  the  fly  was  caught,  and  afterward  such 
great  changes  had  gone  over  the  world  that  the 
trees  had  turned  to  stone  and  were  now  covered 
with  water,  so  men  dug  for  the  gum  in  mines  un 
der  the  sea.  \  It  was  my  interest  in  the  amber,  my 
own  amber,  that  first  opened  my  mind  to  glim 
merings  of  the  stupendous  shaping  of  the  world, 
its  vast  changes  and  its  curious  continuity,  for 
even  in  those  far-off  times,  when  what  was  now 
sea  had  been  dry  land,  the  familiar  fly  had  buzzed 
and  blundered  his  way  to  the  first  sticky  surface 
he  found,  exactly  as  he  might  do  to-day.  \ 

The  last  time  I  saw  the  Wonder  Lady  was  just 
before  we  moved  to  Washington.  She  had  come 


16  UNA  MARY 

to  say  good-by,  and  as  I  stood  beside  her  she  let 
me  play  with  a  pin  she  wore,  made  in  the  shape  of 
a  tiny  box  of  crystal,  set  in  gold,  with  a  lid  that 
opened,  and  inside  a  tiny  crystal  that  moved 
around  like  a  drop  of  water.  It  had  always  seemed 
to  me  the  most  entrancing  jewel,  and  as  she  went 
away  she  gave  it  to  me.  Mamma  used  "to  wear 
it  for  me  until  I  grew  up,"  but  I  found  it  on  the 
pincushion  occasionally,  and  then  I  would  pin  it 
to  my  nightgown  so  Una  Mary  could  wear  it  all 
night. 

I  wonder  if  she  was  just  kind  or  if  the  Wonder 
Lady  realized  a  little  what  her  presents  meant  to 
me,  knew  how  much  food  she  was  giving  to  the 
imaginative,  beauty-loving  Una  Mary  side  of  me. 
I  think  she  must  have  known.  I  remember  her 
as  always  dressed  in  soft,  lustrous  materials  that 
I  loved  to  rest  my  cheek  against,  a  harmony  of 
dull  browns  and  tans  melting  into  the  tones  of  her 
smooth,  dark  hair.  With  her  I  always  think  of 
Agnes,  who  became,  through  me,  a  friend  of  hers, 
and  my  mother's  most  intimate  friend;  but  she 
was  my  friend  first. 

I  was  born  in  a  curious  little  gabled  house 
across  the  street  from  what  I  remember  as  the 
large  and  stately  mansion  where  Agnes  lived.  Our 
house  was  on  the  side  of  the  hill  above  the  city, 
there  so  steep  that  the  back  yard  went  down  in 


FROM  THE  BEGINNING  17 

terraces  to  the  roofs  of  the  houses  below,  while 
on  the  street  side  there  was  a  long  flight  of  steps 
up  to  the  sidewalk  on  a  level  with  the  second-story 
windows  so  Agnes  from  her  house  always  knew, 
by  the  commotion  of  getting  my  carriage  up  the 
steps,  when  "the  baby  was  going  out,"  and  used 
often  to  come  over  and  wheel  me  up  and  down. 
But  as  she  was  fourteen  years  old  and  I  three 
months  old  when  we  first  met  and  smiled,  most 
of  my  memories  of  her  come  later  and  are  con 
nected  with  her  growing  up  and  becoming  a  young 
lady,  a  time  of  great  excitement,  with  many  con 
fidences  to  my  mother,  interspersed  with  teasing 
from  my  father,  at  which  she  always  giggled  so 
delightfully  I  laughed,  too,  in  sympathy. 

I  knew  one  other  real  young  lady — it  never  oc 
curred  to  me  that  married  people  could  be  young 
— Maud.  I  only  remember  the  way  she  looked. 
Dressed  always  in  black,  her  clothes  seemed  a  long 
sheath  for  the  gorgeous  flower  of  her  head  with 
its  flame  of  copper-red  hair.  I  was  sure  she  and 
my  mother  were  the  most  beautiful  people  on 
earth.  Maud  had  a  hat  with  drooping  ostrich 
feathers,  and  how  I  longed  for  one  like  it  for 
Mamma,  who  said  she  could  not  afford  it! 
Later  Agnes  bought  one,  which  was  next  best  to 
Mamma's  having  it,  with  a  long,  green  plume  so 
drooping  that  it  almost  touched  her  shoulder. 


i8  UNA  MARY 

One  day  when  she  was  lunching  with  us  I  went 
up-stairs  and  found  the  hat  lying  on  the  floor, 
with  only  the  rib  of  the  feather  left  and  the  fluff 
scattered  all  over  the  room.  I  rushed  down-stairs 
crying,  and  told  her  the  feather  was  dead  and 
only  its  skeleton  left.  Just  then  we  caught  sight 
of  Agnes's  dog,  a  puppy,  with  telltale  green  fuzz 
sticking  to  the  corners  of  his  mouth.  Only  the 
week  before  he  had  chewed  up  Emerson's  Essays. 
I  begged  for  the  scraps  of  the  feather  and  care 
fully  put  all  the  bits  I  could  find  into  a  box,  and 
next  day  gave  it  a  most  elaborate  funeral  in  the 
back  yard,  with  the  puppy  dragged  at  the  end  of 
a  string  as  chief  mourner. 


CHAPTER  II 
UNA  MARY  AND  THE  IMP 

IX/TY  greatest  friend  was  Harry.  His  mother 
•^  •*•  and  mine  had  gone  to  school  together  in 
Cambridge  and,  both  marrying  at  about  the  same 
time  and  going  to  Cincinnati  to  live,  had  clung 
together,  and  taken  houses  on  the  same  street. 

At  first  they  had  felt  out  of  place  in  what 
seemed,  in  contrast  with  Cambridge,  the  crude 
materialism  of  much  of  the  Western  life,  but  very 
soon  they  found  friends  in  a  circle  of  most  charm 
ing  and  cultivated  people,  most  of  them,  like  our 
selves,  of  the  professional  class,  for  Harry's  father 
was  a  lawyer  and  mine  a  professor. 

As  Harry  and  I  were  the  same  age  we  were 
brought  up  together  and  were  inseparable  com 
panions.  We  had  all  our  toys  in  common  and 
shared  everything  except  my  inner  life  as  Una 
Mary.  That  went  on  quite  apart,  with  its  imag 
inary  people,  places,  and  worships.  Harry's  mind 
was  of  the  concrete  order,  and  I  realized  even 
then  that  he  could  not  possibly  understand. 

19 


20  UNA  MARY 

Among  our  toys  there  was  a  large,  black  boy 
doll,  with  buttons  sewed  on  for  eyes,  named  Sam, 
to  whom  Harry  was  devoted — he  used  to  take 
him. to  bed  with  him  every  night — and  there  was 
a  rubber  baby  named  Jemima  who  belonged  to 
me.  They  were  our  favorite  toys,  for  they  had 
as  many  lives  as  a  cat  and  bobbed  up  serenely 
through  everything. 

We  always  played  as  Harry  pleased,  and  he 
bullied  and  teased  me  a  great  deal,  which  I  bore 
meekly,  until  one  day  when  he  bit  a  hole  in  Je 
mima  I  could  stand  it  no  longer.  All  the  pent-up 
rage  of  Una  Mary  burst  out  at  once  and  I  flew  at 
him  like  a  wildcat.  I  was  smaller  than  he,  but  I 
was  ready  to  fight  to  the  death  for  my  rights,  so 
I  grabbed  him  by  the  shoulders  ready  to  shake 
him  with  all  my  might,  but  before  I  even  began 
the  expression  of  my  face  was  so  fierce  that  he 
burst  at  once  into  loud  wails  for  help.  I  shall 
never  forget  my  surprise  and  triumph  as  I  real 
ized  that  I  had  conquered — conquered  in  spite  of 
being  small,  with  a  strength  I  could  always  com 
mand.  I  only  had  to  set  Una  Mary  free,  to  let 
her  come  outside,  and  she  could  do  anything. 

After  that  I  had  only  to  make  myself  feel  like 
Una  Mary  and  put  on  an  expression  of  grim  de 
termination  to  have  Harry  wilt  at  once.  I  soon 
knew  that  particular  expression  by  the  way  it 


UNA  MARY  AND   THE  IMP  21 

made  my  face  feel,  and  I  used  to  do  it  by  putting 
my  hands  in  front  of  my  face  while  I  frowned  and 
fixed  my  jaws.  Then,  when  the  muscles  were  all 
in  place,  the  feeling  that  corresponded  with  the  ex 
pression  would  come  over  me  until  I  felt  as  fierce 
as  I  looked.  It  became  so  well  recognized  among 
the  children  we  played  with  that  I  had  only  to 
say,  "I'll  fix  my  face,"  to  get  my  own  way  at 
once. 

One  day  I  was  told  Harry  could  not  come  and 
play  with  me  as  he  had  measles.  I  did  not  in  the 
least  know  what  measles  was,  but,  as  I  always  had 
half  of  whatever  he  had,  I  at  once  trotted  down  to 
his  house  to  share  measles,  too.  Their  front  door 
being  unlatched,  I  walked  in  and  up  to  his  room 
undiscovered,  and  when  his  mother  came  in 
presently  to  read  to  him,  there  I  sat  on  the  bed 
drawing  pictures.  I  most  certainly  shared  the 
measles  later,  greatly  to  the  delight  of  Harry,  who 
used  to  come  and  dance  a  war-dance  under  my 
window,  shouting:  " Una's  got  the  measles,  Una's 
caught  the  measles!"  But  he  always  brought  me 
a  present,  so  I  forgave  him.  Usually  it  was  ice 
cream  or  jelly.  In  fact,  being  ill  when  I  was  a 
small  child,  as  I  look  back  upon  it,  seems  always 
to  have  been  a  prolonged  orgy  of  delicacies;  even 
medicine  went  down  in  jelly  or  lemonade.  Agnes 
consoled  the  measles  with  a  pair  of  toy  scales  on 


22  UNA  MARY 

which  I  weighed  the  sugar  for  my  oatmeal.  They 
gave  generous  weight,  those  scales! 

All  the  children  we  knew  had  the  measles  that 
spring.  One  after  another  it  tumbled  them  down 
like  a  row  of  dominoes,  and  we  used  to  trace  its 
whole  genealogy,  singing  it  like  a  chant,  until  we 
got  back  to 

"John  caught  it  from  Una, 
Una  caught  it  from  Harry," 

and  then  came  the  question  of  where  Harry  got 
his,  until  one  child  said,  "God  dropped  his  measles 
down  from  heaven;  everything  starts  there,"  which 
seemed  to  all  of  us  a  satisfactory  explanation,  so 
we  ended  our  chant  with:  "And  Harry  caught  it 
from  God." 

We  had  two  favorite  games.  One  was  to  jump 
up  and  down  in  the  centre  of  a  large  double  bed, 
the  springs  sending  us  high  in  the  air  again  at  the 
end  of  each  jump.  It  was  blissful  in  itself,  this 
effortless  being  shot  straight  up,  like  coming  to 
the  surface  of  the  water  after  a  dive;  and  then  on 
coming  down  on  the  soft,  bouncing  mattress,  to 
keep  one's  balance  was  almost  as  skilful  as  the 
circus  rider's  poise  on  the  back  of  her  horse.  We 
played  circus  rider  at  first,  but  later  I  had  the 
theory  that  just  jumping  for  its  own  sake  made 
Christmas  come  sooner,  that  it  made  time  go 


UNA  MARY  AND  THE  IMP  23 

faster,  so  each  day  we  always  did  "  twenty  jumps 
nearer  Christmas."  The  whole  year  to  me  was 
"going  on  Christmas/'  as  soon  as  the  first  of 
January  came  with  its  change  of  date,  just  as 
I,  the  very  night  after  my  birthday,  was  always 
"going  on  five,"  or  whatever  my  next  age  was 
to  be. 

Our  other  game  we  only  played  when  the 
family  were  all  out.  We  felt  it  would  not  be 
approved.  The  servants  certainly  took  that  view 
of  it,  but,  as  they  never  told  on  us,  we  kept  on 
playing  it  with  a  feeling  of  wickedness  that  was 
half  its  excitement.  This  was  indoor  coasting.  We 
did  it  sitting  on  brooms  or  a  tin  tea-tray,  down 
the  front  staircase  in  Harry's  house — his  stairs 
were  steeper  than  ours.  The  broom  was  the  safe 
and  conservative  method,  as  the  handle  went  in 
front  and  broke  the  fall  at  the  bottom;  also  it 
went  more  slowly;  but  my  soul  was  only  satisfied 
by  the  perils  and  joys  of  the  tea-tray.  I  started 
at  the  top,  collecting  my  small  self  and  super 
fluous  skirts  as  near  the  centre  of  the  tray  as 
possible,  holding  fast  to  the  carpet  until  I  was 
ready.  Then  I  gave  a  push  with  both  hands,  and 
down  through  bumping,  clattering  space  I  tore 
with  such  impetus  that  I  only  stopped,  when  shot 
off  the  tray  at  the  bottom  step,  by  bumping  into 
the  front  door  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  hall. 


24  UNA  MARY 

Mamma  could  never  understand  how  children  got 
so  many  black-and-blue  spots. 

I  have  since  been  down  the  "helter-skelter  light 
house"  at  Earl's  Court.  I  was  with  two  very 
dignified  barristers  in  evening  dress  and  high  hats 
at  the  time,  and,  as  we  all  sat  on  our  little  mats 
and  shot  down  the  spiral  track,  I  felt  the  inventor 
had  a  true  though  dim  ideal  of  real  pleasure;  and 
certainly  the  crowd  that  watched  us  shoot  out  at 
the  bottom  minus  our  hats  were  appreciative.  I 
have  also  slid  down  a  grassy  mountainside  in 
Hawaii,  sitting  on  a  palm-leaf  as  the  old  kings 
used  to  do,  but  it  could  not  compare  with  tea- 
tray  coasting. 

The  children  I  knew  and  played  with  during 
the  eight  years  I  lived  in  Cincinnati  were  nearly 
all  boys.  There  were  a  few  girls — I  remember 
them  in  the  background-Abut  boys  cared  for  the 
things  I  liked;  that  is,  the  things  I  liked  as  Una.) 
Una  Mary  never  played  with  any  one.  She  walked 
alone,  like  the  cat  in  Kipling's  story.  So  I  spent 
most  of  my  time  with  Harry  and  his  friends,  and 
together  we  climbed  every  tree  and  shed  in  the 
neighborhood.  I  have  always  admired  my  mother's 
courage  in  allowing  it,  for  I  was  often  badly  hurt, 
but  after  each  fall,  when  vinegar  and  brown  paper 
had  been  applied,  her  only  comment  was,  "You 
must  learn  to  climb  better,"  and  I  did.  Soon  I 


UNA  MARY  AND   THE  IMP  25 

could  get  to  almost  any  roof  by  way  of  the  water 
spout  and  gutters.  Then  one  fatal  day  I  climbed 
to  the  top  of  the  belfry  of  the  church.  I  had 
climbed  up  safely  and  laboriously,  but  getting 
down  the  steep  slate  roof  from  the  ridge-pole  to 
the  gutter,  so  high  above  the  ground,  was  more 
than  I  could  do.  Panic  seized  me,  and  there  I 
sat  until  rescued  by  ladders  from  the  fire-engine 
house.  After  that,  Mamma  drew  the  line  at  roofs, 
and  the  boys,  who  had  none  of  them  dared  try  it 
themselves,  were  unbearable  on  the  subject,  while 
the  minister,  whose  church  it  was,  called  me  his 
" sparrow  on  the  housetop."  I  wondered  if  spar 
rows  were  trying  to  screw  up  their  courage  to  fly 
when  they  sat  so  long  on  the  ridge-pole. 

It  was  really  all  the  fault  of  my  Imp.  It  would 
never  have  occurred  to  me  to  be  afraid  if  it  had 
not  been  for  him.  But  it  was  just  the  sort  of 
thing  he  was  always  doing,  whispering  in  my  ear 
as  he  did  then:  "You  don't  dare  go  down.  You're 
scared." 

The  boys  had  said,  "You  dasn't  do  it,"  and 
that  had  sent  me  up  at  once;  and  then  at  the 
height  of  my  triumph,  as  I  looked  down  at  the 
awe-struck  group  below,  while  a  frantic  policeman 
shook  his  club  and  yelled,  "Come  down  or  I'll 
arrest  you,"  suddenly  the  Imp  had  paralyzed  me. 
He  has  been  the  curse  of  my  life,  that  Imp,  for  he 


26  UNA  MARY 

is  always  there,  just  behind  my  left  ear,  a  little 
black  demon  watching  and  jeering  at  everything, 
and  he  has  a  hateful,  hunchbacked  sort  of  mind. 
He  actually  seemed  to  giggle  whenever  I  coughed 
during  my  prayers  and  was  delighted  when  I  was 
unhappy.  I  knew  he  was  not  real,  but  that  made 
him  more  awful.  A  real  demon  I  could  do  some 
thing  about,  but  one  that  was  just  in  my  own 
mind  there  seemed  no  way  of  controlling,  until  I 
had  a  brilliant  idea  of  pretending  to  cry  or  to  be 
naughty  just  to  amuse  him.  As  he  always  seemed 
to  be  taken  in  by  it,  I  gradually  grew  to  despise  him, 
but  he  required  a  great  deal  of  time  and  attention. 
(The  other  girls  were  all  afraid  to  climb,  and 
hated  pet  toads,  or  "pretending,"  and  the  other 
things  I  cared  for;  but  besides  our  lack  of  tastes 
in  common  there  was  a  deeper  gulf  that  separated 
me  from  all  the  girls  I  knew,  and  that  was  Clothes 
and  everything  that  had  to  do  with  outward  ap 
pearance.  | 

My  parents  had  been  brought  up  in  Boston 
among  the  most  unworldly  and  transcendental  set 
of  people,  so  their  point  of  view  was  wholly  that^ 
of  "plain  living  and  high  thinking,"  the  " plain, "J 
whatever  it  was,  being  of  the  best  and  most  whole 
some  materials,  but  lacking  a  lightness  of  touch 
I  longed  for.     So  my  clothes  were  good  but  very 
severe  and  usually  dark  in  color. 


UNA  MARY  AND  THE  IMP          27 

At  parties  the  other  little  girls  wore  fluffy  mus 
lins  trimmed  with  lace  ruffles  and  bows.  I  looked 
at  pictures  of  them  the  other  day  in  an  old  fash 
ion  book,  and  they  must  have  been  nightmares 
of  fussiness,  those  children's  dresses  of  the  early 
eighties,  but  to  me  then  they  seemed  the  quin 
tessence  of  loveliness,  for  at  the  parties  when  the 
other  little  jrjrlsjwore  them  T  alway*  harl  on  plain^ 
_stiff  white  pique.  JHow_I  have  hated  that  ma- 
Oterial  ever  since!  Then,  too,  the  others  all  had 
long,  flowing  hair  with  bangs  or  a  single  curl  tied 
by  a  large  bow  on  one  side  of  the  head,  while  my 
hair  was  cropped  short  like  a  boy's,  so  short  I  did 
not  even  know  it  was  curly,  of  the  true  angel  kind, 
and  might  have  floated  in  ringlets  down  my  back 
if  only  it  had  been  allowed  to  grow.  As  it  was, 
I  looked  exactly  like  Papa's  nickname  for  me: 
"Little  Lanky  To whead."(  It  perfectly  described 
Una,  and  how  Una  Mary  abhorred  her!  J 

Parties  were  a  deep  misery  to  me,  I  felt  so 
unlike  the  others,  and  the  sort  of  discomfort  the 
older  boys  seemed  to  feel  in  their  overgrown  hands 
and  feet  I  felt  all  through  my  whole  body.  How 
I  wished  I  knew  how  to  make  myself  invisible, 
for  then  I  should  have  adored  parties,  they  were 
so  pretty  and  so  gay!  Once  a  little  boy  gave  me 
the  ring  he  had  found  in  his  slice  of  cake  at  a 
birthday  party,  and  I  almost  cried  with  pride  at 


28  UNA  MARY 

being  treated  as  if  I  were  a  real  girl,  and  for  a 
time  forgot  all  about  how  Una  looked  and  was 
in  the  full  swing  of  feeling  as  if  I  were  really  Una 
Mary  and  having  a  magnificent  time,  when  the 
Imp  brought  me  to  myself  by  whispering:  "Look 
at  your  boots!"  I  looked  and  collapsed  like  a 
pricked  bubble,  for  those  boots  were  the  worst 
trial  of  my  outward  life.  The  other  girls  all  wore 
shiny  kid  buttoned  ones  or  thin  little  slippers 
with  a  strap  over  the  instep,  while  I  was  con 
demned  to  perpetual  lacing  boots,  the  only  ones 
in  Cincinnati,  of  the  best  quality  calf,  though  that 
mattered  nothing  to  me  then,  ordered  each  year 
from  Tuttle's,  in  Boston.  (^Poor  Mamma,  with  her 
care  and  truest  economy,  little  guessed  the  agony 
she  caused  me.  I  hated  those  shoes  as  I  hated 
nothing  else  on  earth,  with  a  hatred  of  absolute 
despair,  for  it  did  no  good  to  scuff  out  a  pair  as 
quickly  as  possible.  /  I  tried  that  once  by  kicking 
at  a  pile  of  stones  for  hours.  Their  exact  dupli 
cate,  only  a  little  larger,  at  once  appeared."^ 

All  the  other  children  wore  kid  gloves,  while  I 
had  to  wear  mittens  in  winter  until  I  was  twelve 
years  old;  and  then  my  sense  of  justice  was  utterly 
outraged  because  my  sister  was  given  kid  gloves 
at  the  same  time,  and  yet  she  was  nearly  three 
years  younger  than  I! 

It  was  all  tragedy  to  me  and  gave  me  a  feeling 


UNA  MARY  AND   THE  IMP  29 

of  fundamental  difference  from  the  others  in  a  rich 
Western  town  where  little  girls  of  five  wore  jew 
elry  and  carried  parasols.  They  even  had  their 
ears  pierced  for  earrings.  They  wore  thread  run 
through  at  first,  then  straws  to  keep  the  holes 
open,  and  after  that  ravishing  little  forget-me-nots 
of  turquoise  or  pearls,  while  my  ears  just  ended 
in  lumps  of  skin  —  even  a  straw  run  through,  I 
thought,  gave  a  more  finished  appearance.  But 
Mamma  was  firm  when  I  implored  her  to  let  Lizzie, 
who  had  done  her  nieces',  stick  a  threaded  needle 
through  each  of  my  ears. 

I  was  once  given  a  ring  and  a  parasol  by  a  kind 
and  pitying  person,  but  I  was  never  allowed  to 
use  them.  I  tried  on  the  ring  and  then  they  were 
put  away  until  I  got  older,  put  away  with  the 
precious  sash  and  amber  necklace  that  I  was  only 

lowed  to  wear  on  my  birthday  and  Christmas. 

Of  course  I  am  glad  of  it  all  now  and  know  that 
my  mother  was  right,  but  it  was  iron  in  my  soul 
at  the  time.  I  am  especially  glad  because  it 
tended  to  throw  me  so  .entirely  with  boys.)  They 
said  I  was  not  silly  like  the  other  girls  —  how  could 
I  be  with  such  a  handicap?  But  iLwag  the  out- 
door  life_of_adyenture  I  lived 


peculiarly  needed  as  a  balance  to  my  own  inner 
imaginary  life  that  went  on  quite  apart  andr-lof- 
which  I  saved  a  stated  time  each  day,  when  I  be- 


30  UNA  MARY 

came  wholly  Una  Mary  and  my  imaginary-clothes 
were  simply  an  orgy  of  ribbons  and  lace. 

Una  Mary  at  this  period  was  always  dressed 
in  white  muslin  that  absolutely  frothed  ruffles  all 
around  her  knees,  with  a  red  sash  tied  in  a  bow 
as  large  as  a  bustle  behind  and  a  scarlet  hair  rib 
bon  tying  up  the  single  curl  that  rose  above  the 
bang  on  her  forehead — for,  while  other  children 
had  either  a  bang  or  a  tied-back  curl,  I  decided 
to  give  Una  Mary  both — and  she  wore  just  as 
many  rings  and  bracelets  and  necklaces  as  she 
pleased,  and,  of  course,  had  earrings  and  slippers 
with  heels.  How  I  admired  her  and  how  I  felt 
her  appearance  did  justice  to  what  I  really  was! 
Sometimes  after  a  party  I  wished  I  could  die  at 
once,  because  my  celestial  self,  I  was  sure,  would 
look  like  Una  Mary,  and  then  God  and  the  angels, 
anyhow,  would  know  what  I  was  really  like,  and 
perhaps  I  could  be  a  ghost  and  haunt  the  party 
people,  and  then  it  would  scare  them  to  see  how 
lovely  I  was  and  they  would  cry  to  think  they 
had  never  known  it  while  I  was  still  alive. 
(  Even  with  the  boys  I  felt  different  and  some 
thing  of  an  outsider  because  of  my  pronunciation. 
I  was  brought  up  with  the  accent  of  Boston  and 
all  my  being  longed  for  the  rolling  Western  R. 
But  family  influences  proved  too  strong  for  me. 
Although  I  grew  up  entirely  in  the  West  and  the 


UNA  MARY  AND   THE  IMP          31 

South,  so  far  as  I  knoto  I  have  not  picked  up  a 
trace  of  either  accent.      \ 

All  the  other  children  called  their  parents 
popper  and  mommer  while  I  had  been  taught  to 
say  papa  and  mamma,  clipped-off  and  meagre 
words  in  comparison.  I  remember  once,  when  I 
met  a  new  child,  referring  casually  to  my  mother 
as  mommer  and  the  feeling  of  relief  it  gave  me 
to  have  it  taken  for  granted,  instead  of  the 
sneers  of  "  stuck  up,"  followed  by  a  mimic  of  my 
" mamma"  that  was  the  usual  beginning  of  my 
friendships,  and  yet  wjth.f.hft  relief  we.nf.  snr.h  a._ 
sense  of  disloyalty  that  T  never  no  id  it  nrm'n 
/'The  story  of  the  Ugly  Duckling  seemed  to  me 
to  pathetic  I  could  hardly  bear  to  have  it  read. 
I  knew  just  how  he  felt,  and  yet  the  boys  were 
nice  to  me  in  their  way  after  they  got  over  the 
first  "queerness."  The  trouble  was  that  I  could 
not  myself  get  over  the  feeling  that  it  was  true. 
I  was  queer.  My  Imp  kept  me  reminded  of  it 
continually.  ^ 

Next  door  to  us  lived  a  boy  of  fourteen,  Richard, 
who  became  one  of  my  heroes,  and  besides  being 
part  of  my  outer  life  gave  a  real  impetus  to  my 
inner  life  by  teaching  me  to  play  with  chessmen, 
not  chess,  of  course,  but  games  of  fairy-land  and 
battle  on  the  carpet  in  his  room  when  I  went  over, 
as  I  occasionally  did,  to  have  supper  with  him. 


32  UNA  MARY 

I  had  sometimes  played  with  a  carved  ivory  set 
of  chess  Mamma  had  at  home,  but  it  was  Richard 
who  taught  me  the  names  of  the  different  pieces 
and  explained  in  terms  of  the  fairy-tale  world 
what  they  meant — kings,  queens,  bishops,  knights, 
.  and  pawns.  I  was  simply  entranced  by  the  vis- 
,  tas  of  romance  they  opened  before  the  eyes  of  Una 
Mary,  and  at  once  made  them  a  part  of  my  imag 
inary  world.  The  knights  became  the  sworn  ene 
mies  of  my  Imp,  and  persistently  joisted  against 
him  when  he  cut  a  preposterous  figure,  perched 
on  a  big,  gray  horse,  like  a  little,  black  monkey 
dressed  up  in  armor.  Edward,  my  imaginary 
friend,  the  companion  of  my  whole  childhood,  was 
the  over-prince  at  the  head  of  the  chess  world. 

The  first  time  I  had  supper  with  Richard  is 
indelibly  impressed  upon  my  mind,  because  it  was 
the  first  time  I  had  ever  gone  anywhere  alone, 
except  to  Harry's  house,  and  in  honor  of  the 
occasion  I  wore  my  best  dress  gf  dark-blue  cash 
mere,  with  a  lace  collar,  my  handkerchief  securely 
fastened  with  a  safety-pin  to  the  belt  that  defined 
my  knees  rather  than  my  waist-line. 

I  must  have  been  very  small,  for  it  was  the 
first  time  I  had  sat  in  a  real  chair  instead  of  a 
high  chair — the  fact  that  I  had  a  hassock  and  a 
dictionary  under  me  in  no  way  detracted  from 
the  dignity — and  I  drank  out  of  a  glass  tumbler 


UNA  MARY  AND  THE  IMP          33 

instead  of  a  silver  mug.  I  was  so  impressed  by 
the  grownupness  of  the  occasion  that  I  decided 
to  hold  my  fork  and  spoon  as  Lizzie  had  often 
told  me  " ladies  always  did,"  balanced  lightly  be 
tween  my  thumb  and  forefinger  like  a  pen,  instead 
of  clutched  securely  with  my  whole  fist  as  I  had 
always  held  them  before.  I  even  struggled  withv 
my  knife  and  fork  at  the  same  time,  but  that  was 
too  much  for  me  to  engineer.  It  was  like  learn 
ing  to  skate.  They  seemed  possessed  to  go  off  in 
opposite  directions,  until  Richard  advised  me  to 
concentrate  my  mind  on  the  knife  and  let  the  fork 
take  care  of  itself.  Then  I  began  to  succeed. 
The  fork  was  as  meek  as  a  lamb  if  I  paid  no  at 
tention  to  it,  and  after  that  day  I  always  cut  up 
my  own  food  and  held  my  fork  the  grown  way, 
much  to  the  disgust  of  Harry,  who  was  months 
in  learning  to  imitate  me. 

The  next  time  I  went  into  society  alone  was 
for  lunch  with  some  children  I  had  met  during  my 
brief  career  at  kindergarten.  Before  I  went 
Mamma  impressed  it  upon  me  that  I  was  to  eat 
whatever  was  given  to  me  whether  I  liked  it  or 
not,  and  not  behave  like  a  little  girl  who  was  at 
our  house  one  day  when  we  had  bread  pudding, 
which  she  refused  to  eat,  and  when  Mamma  had 
urged  her  to  try  some  and  see  how  nice  it  was 
had  replied:  "It  looks  familiar."  I  had  sympa- 


34  UNA  MARY 

thized  with  her  deeply,  but  Mamma  said  it  was 
bad  manners,  and  if  I  did  such  a  thing  people 
would  all  think  my  mother  had  brought  me  up 
badly.  So  I  sat  down  at  table  fairly  solemn  with 
good  intentions. 

I  had  never  seen  olives  before,  but  when  they 
were  passed  to  me  I  took  one  and  bit  into  it 
politely.  Then,  after  my  first  wild  struggle  with 
disgust  at  its  taste,  I  wondered  what  I  should 
do.  I  simply  could  not  bite  into  the  horrid  thing 
again,  and  yet  it  must  be  eaten.  Only  one  course 
seemed  possible,  so  I  took  a  huge  drink  of  water, 
gulped  hard,  and  swallowed  the  olive,  stone  and 
all.  Though  almost  choked,  I  was  supported  by 
the  feeling  that  the  family  was  not  to  be  disgraced 
through  me.  Even  if  we  could  not  live  in  a  house 
with  a  mansard  roof,  as  all  really  grand  people 
did,  I  had  proved  I  was  well  brought  up ! 

A  little  later  one  of  the  children  asked  for  my 
olive  stone,  and  my  calm  statement  that  I  had 
swallowed  it  created  such  a  delightful  excitement 
and  made  me  such  a  heroine  that  soon  after,  at 
home,  when  Harry  was  lunching  with  us,  in  order 
to  impress  him  I  decided  to  swallow  a  whole  prune, 
as  we  had  no  olives.  But  it  proved  too  large  to 
go  down,  in  spite  of  all  my  efforts,  so  I  dropped  the 
stone  behind  the  side-table  and  then  announced 
that  I  had  swallowed  it.  The  immediate  effect 


UNA  MARY  AND  THE  IMP          35 

was  all  I  could  wish.  Harry's  eyes  almost  popped 
out  of  his  head  with  excitement.  The  frightened 
household  gathered  around  me,  and  everything 
was  perfect  until  Lizzie  rushed  in  from  the  kitchen 
with  the  suggestion  of  standing  me  on  my  head 
and  shaking  me  by  the  legs,  as  that  was  the  way 
they  got  the  penny  out  of  her  sister's  Tommy. 
She  seemed  on  the  point  of  carrying  it  out,  so  I 
hastily  remarked  k  was  only  a  make-believe  stone 
I  had  swallowed.  (jFrom  the  grieved  dignity  with 
which  I  was  treated^  fox  -several  d&ys,  it  was-te- 
impressed  upon  me  that,  in  the  grown  world, 


make-believes  are  called  lies.l 


Imp  was  delighted  with  the  whole  affair. 
It  was  just  the  sort  of  thing  that  suited  him,  and 
he  held  it  over  me  for  years. 


CHAPTER  III 
GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS 

1\/|"Y  parents  were  Unitarians,  a  form  of  belief 
•*•"  not  easily  made  clear  to  a  small  child,  so 
they  decided  it  was  better  to  bring  me  up  with 
very  little  religious  teaching  of  any  kind  until  I 
was  old  enough  fully  to  grasp  its  meaning  and 
reason  a  way  out  for  myself.  When  I  asked  the 
theological  questions  all  children  ask  I  was  told 
nothing  except  that  there  was  a  God  who  had  made 
the  world,  about  whom  I  could  not  understand 
until  I  grew  older.  They  felt  that  left  me  free 
to  work  out  my  own  salvation,  when  the  time 
came,  unhampered  by  preconceptions.  ILthe  re 
sult  wasjio  religion,  at  least  it  would  be  a  sincere 
negative.  If --some.,  form  o^-creed,  Unitarianism 
seemed  to  them  inevitable;  it  would  be  maturely 
thought  out  and  really  believed.  This  attitude  was 
Characteristic  of  their  conscientious  fair-minded- 
ness^  and  Harry,  the  only  child  I  knew  well,  was 
brought  up  in  the  same  way. 

It  was  at  the  time  when  the  conflict  between 
36 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS  37 

Reason  and  Religion  was  most  acute.  Nearly  all 
our  friends  had  become  either  agnostics  or  Uni 
tarians,  though  a  few  of  them  were  still  Episco 
palians.  Agnes  was  going  through  the  agonies  of 
emancipation  when  I  was  a  small  child,  and  her 
difficulties,  I  think,  strengthened  my  parents  in 
their  theories  about  bringing  me  up.  pThe  only 
trouble  was,  they  never  for  a  moment  suspected 
that  their  attitude  tended  to  throw  a  veil  of  mys 
tery  and  terror  over  the  whole  subject  which 
made  me  wonder  about  it  continually.  I  longed 
to  know  more,  yet  a  certain  family  loyalty  pre 
vented  my  asking  other  people  the  questions  my 
parents  refused  to  answer?)  I  laboriously  worked 
out  my  own  solutions  from  the  scanty  information 
I  picked  up  incidentally  from  Lizzie  or  from  other 
children  and  from  my  own  observations,  and  so 
made  my  belief  out  of  strange  and  twisted  mate 
rials.  _JTligories_of_gorne  sort  I  had  to  have — every 
child  must  who_lhinks  at  all— :andJ  Wfl-s,  T  ^Ink^, 
T>y  n^I^e^rejLllyLJ^ligious-^rthat  is,  Una  Mary  was 
-^and  all  my  successive  religious  beliefs  were 
founded  on  the  highest  insight  I  had  and  my  vari 
ous  cults  were  conducted  with  real  worship  and  ab 
solute  sincerity. 

(Harry  and  I  were  most  carefully  brought  up  on 
the  ethical  side.)  That,  we  were  supposed  to  be 
able  to  understand.  Even  truth  was  not  con- 


38  UNA  MARY 

sidered  too  abstract  for  our  minds,  though  where 
the  line  was  drawn  between  "pretending"  and  lies 
was  too  much  for  me.  Grown-ups  were  so  un 
reasonable  and  unexpected  about  it!  Why  it  was 
wrong  to  swallow  a  make-believe  prune  stone  but 
rather  a  virtue  to  see  a  make-believe  bear  was 
more  even  than  my  Imp  could  understand.^  Harry 
early  gave  up  the  struggle  of  discrimination,  and 
decided  offhand  that  everything  you  did  not  know 
about  was  lies  and  nothing  was  true  except  what 
you  were  able  to  preface  with 

"Honest  true 
Black  and  blue, 
Lay  me  down  % 

And  cut  me  in  two."     ) 

Harry  was  eminently  practical.  He  liked  his 
world  simplified,  spiritually,  mentally,  and  actually. 
He  was  always  inventing  labor-saving  devices, 
and  could  slip  off  his  clothes  at  night  by  only  un 
buttoning  four  buttons.  The  rest  he  left  but 
toned,  so  that  in  the  morning  he  could  put  them 
on  whole,  so  to  speak,  like  a  shell. 

In  moments  of  moral  stress,  especially  on  those 
occasions  when  one  had  to  give  up  something  be 
cause  one  was  the  oldest,  our  parents  seemed  to 
base  their  pleadings  and  reasonings  entirely  upon 
the  ethical  system  of  "Mr.  Dooun  Tothers."  It 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS     39 

was  Harry  who  discovered  his  sex.  He  had  heard 
some  one  say,  "He  said,  Dooun  Tothers,"  which 
proved  he  was  masculine,  though  to  me  he  had 
seemed  rather  feminine,  a^  vague,  much-resented 
srmjLof  pathos  whose  grip  was  s^ft  as  velvet  fait 
powerful  as  steel,, 

We  were  never  ordered  to  do  anything  or  told 
arbitrarily  that  we  must  obey.  The  matter  was 
always  explained  to  us  and  left  to  our  own  better 
natures  to  decide.  How  I  detested^iny  Better 
Nature!  It  seemed  a  precipitate  of  all  the  tears 
and  flabbiness  of  which  Una  and  Una  Mary,  both 
of  them,  were  capable.  It  was  the  most  weak- 
kneed,  lackadaisical  creature  and  gave  in  at  once. 
The  pathos  of  Mr.  Dooun  Tothers  was  always  more 
than  it  could  bear. 

As  soon  as  I  heard  Mamma  say,  "Remember, 
Una,  Dooun  Tothers,"  I  felt  the  battle  was  lost. 
I  knew  in  a  moment  I  should  be  handing  over 
whatever  it  was  he  wanted,  and  the  worst  of  it 
was,  it  was  usually  something  I  already  had;  for 
he  not  only  took  away  future  joys  but  snatched 
them  out  of  your  very  hand.  It  was  rare,  indeed, 
when  he  allowed  you  to  keep  the  largest  apple. 

Once  he  took  the  most  unkind  advantage.  My 
grandmother  had  sent  me  money  to  buy  a  dog.  I 
wanted  a  dog  more  than  anything  else  in  the  world. 
We  were  at  the  seashore  at  the  time,  and  Mamma 


40  UNA  MARY 

read  to  me  from  the  newspaper  about  the  vacation 
work  for  poor  children,  a  scheme  that  had  just 
been  started.  That  all  children  could  not  go  away 
for  the  summer  was  a  quite  new  and  terrible  idea, 
but  that  some  of  them  had  never  even  picked 
a  wild  flower  or  been  in  the  woods  seemed  as 
unfair  as  being  left  out  at  Christmas — worse,  for 
here  there  was  no  one  who  could  rectify  the  mis 
take,  no  Santa  Claus  to  whom  one  could  appeal. 
As  I  talked  it  over  with  Mamma  she  said  that  we 
could,  each  of  us,  help,  and  if  we  all  saved  up  and 
sent  money  there  would  soon  be  enough  to  take 
most  of  the  children  to  the  country;  that  the 
money  my  grandmother  had  given  me  for  a  dog, 
for  instance,  would  be  enough  to  send  two  children 
to  the  country  for  two  weeks,  and  she  was  sure 
grandmother  would  be  glad  to  have  me  give  it  to 
the  vacation  fund  instead  of  using  it  to  buy  a  dog. 
That  was  the  sort  of  thing  Dooun  Tothers  meant. 

My  heart  was  wrung  with  sympathy  for  those 
poor  children,  and  yet  with  all  my  being  I  longed 
for  a  dog,  an  Irish  setter,  a  puppy,  a  red  one,  that 
I  could  bring  up  myself.  The  conflict  was  really 
agonizing,  but  when  I  heard  the  name  of  Dooun 
Tothers  I  knew  I  was  doomed.  I  might  as  well 
give  up  that  puppy  at  once.  So  the  money  was  sent. 

Later  I  derived  such  satisfaction  from  seeing 
my  name  in  the  newspaper  as  a  benefactor  that 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS  41 

Harry,  from  sheer  jealousy,  was  compelled  to  send 
the  money  from  his  pig  bank  to  get  his  name  in 
the  paper,  too.  But  he  always  considered  it  an 
additional  grievance  against  Dooun  Tothers. 

That  was  one  of  the  very  rare  times  when  Mr. 
Dooun  Tothers  gave  us  any  material  compensa 
tion.  Surely  the  magnitude  of  the  sacrifice  de 
manded  it!  Usually  the  only  satisfaction  was 
having  the  hurt  feeling  inside  you  stop — the  hurt 
feeling  he  alone  had  created  by  battering  against 
the  Better  Self. 

Grown  people  had  another  way  of  working  upon 
us  which  we  welcomed  quite  unsuspectingly,  until 
I  one  day  woke  up  to  what  they  were  really  doing. 
This  jvas  by  means  of  bribes.  On  and  on  they 
lured  us  along  the  patE~6T~virtue,  made  smooth 
and  pleasant  by  ice-cream  for  dessert,  new  pennies, 
or,  on  Lizzie's  part,  by  the  tin-foil  saved  from 
yeast-cakes — tin-foil  from  which  priceless  jewels 
could  be  made — and  once  I  collected  the  pieces  for 
a  whole  month  and  made  a  silver  ball  like  the  one 
the  Princess  lost  in  the  fountain  in  the  story  of  the 
Frog  Prince.  As  I  say,  we  welcomed  the  spoils 
system,  and  Harry  remained  its  faithful  supporter 
as  long  as  I  knew  him,  but  I  looked  at  it  askance 
from  the  day  when  I  made  my  discovery,  which 
came  about  in  this  way: 

My  mother  was  very  ill,  so  ill  my  grandmother 


42  UNA  MARY 

had  come  on  to  take  care  of  her.  The  whole  house 
had  to  be  kept  very  quiet,  and  I  used  to  sit  on  the 
stairs  outside  Mamma's  room  playing  softly  with  my 
doll,  hoping  and  hoping  she  would  soon  be  better. 
Then  came  the  happy  day  when  she  was  better, 
able  to  sit  up,  and  my  grandmother  began  to  pack 
to  go  home.  I  was  sorry  she  was  going  home  be 
cause  she  used  to  tell  me  stories  about  when  she 
was  a  little  girl  and  could  paint  on  china.  During 
this  visit  she  had  given  Mamma  a  tea  set  painted 
with  yellow  cowslips.  When  I  said  I  was  sorry  she 
was  going  she  asked  me  if  I  would  go  with  her  to 
Cambridge  and  make  a  long  visit.  I  did  not  want 
to  go  at  all.  I  wanted  to  stay  and  be  near  Mamma 
so  that  I  could  be  sure  she  was  getting  better. 
Then  my  grandmother  added  that  if  I  went  home 
with  her  I  could  have  an  orange  to  suck  every  day, 
and  I  said  at  once  that  I  would  go.  She  gave  me 
an  orange  on  the  spot  to  make  me  realize  imme 
diately  the  joys  that  were  before  me,  and  as  I  sat 
on  the  stairs  luxuriously  sucking  it  the  full  enor 
mity  of  the  situation  came  over  me|  By  saying 
I  would  go,  just  because  I  was  to  have  an  orange 
every  day,  I  had  seemed  to  say  that  I  cared  more 
for  oranges  than  I  did  for  Mamma,  and  I  knew  that 
was  not  true.  r>Was  that  what  grown  people  always 
did  when  they  offered  us  presents  for  doing  as 
they  wished?  Did _they  make  us  sell  J:he  things 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS     43 


best  ior  material  joy  Hk£_aiL_Qrange_jQr-_-. 
letting  you  wear  your  best  _.dress?__  Translated  into 
my  own  terms,  it  seemed  as  if  what  they  did  was 
to_pay  Una  to  ^beJjay-JJn^r-Maryy  and  from-  that 
day  on  I  was  ^cym^j-bquLbiib-es^and  never  took 
them  unless,  like  the  tin-fpjlj_ih£^-we^e-^-  Una 
Mary's  "worlcL  That  seemed  fair  and  was  Jgj>_ 
chajQg_e^np^bribery\.  ,_My  father  and  mother  never 
used  this  method.  rThey  always  asked  me  to  do  as 
they  wished  because  they  wished  it,  because  it 
would  please  them,  or  because  it  would  make  them 
unhappy  if  I  failed  to  do  so.  This  I  wholly  under 
stood,  and  it  seemed  perfectly  fair  to  me  and  to 
them.  My  respect  for  their  moral  judgment  was 
never  clouded  by  the  doubts  which  made  me  feel  < 
more  and  more  uncertain  about  the  rest  of  the 
grown-up  world.  \ 

My  mother  says  she  read  stories  aloud  to  me 
from  a  children's  version  of  the  Old  Testament,  but 
I  cannot  remember  hearing  them  at  all,  which  is 
curious,  as  other  stories  which  were  read  tome  made 
a  most  vivid  impression.  The  Bible  itself  was  quite 
unknown  ground  until  I  was  ten  and  stumbled 
upon  the  Apocrypha  in  an  old  edition  of  the  Bible 
printed  with  long  s's  and  beautiful  early  type.  I 
puzzled  over  it  at  first  simply  because  of  the  quaint 
lettering  and  then  became  utterly  fascinated  by 
the  stories  themselves.  They  seemed  as  rich  and 


44  UNA  MARY 

glowing  as  the  mythology  stories  of  the  Gods  and 
Goddesses,  but  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  the 
Lord  God  they  spoke  of  could  be  the  God  that  I 
had  always  heard  about  and  said  a  prayer  to.  He 
had  seemed  too  cold  and  remote  to  be  brought  into 
stories.  The  Lord  God  must  be  some  especial 
person  of  olden  times  like  Jupiter.  I  grew  exceed 
ingly  fond  of  the  Apocrypha,  but  it  was  not  until 
I  was  twelve  that  I  went  on  from  it  to  the  Bible; 
in  fact,  it  was  not  until  then  that  I  knew  there  was 
any  connection  between  the  two. 

I  was  taught  to  say  a  prayer,  "The  Prayer,"  I 
called  it,  and  for  years  had  no  idea  there  could  be 
any  others.  It  was  the  utterly  unchristian  rhyme 
dear  to  so  many  people  from  childhood  associations : 

"Now  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep, 
I  pray  to  God  my  soul  to  keep. 
If  I  should  die  before  I  wake, 
I  pray  to  God  my  soul  to  take." 

So  often  it  is  the  only  religious  food  given  to  chil- 
ren,  who  either  pay  no  attention  to  it  or  repeat  it 
quite  mechanically,  with  often  no  more  impression 
of  its  meaning  than  the  children  in  "  Auton  House," 
to  whom  it  was 

"Now  a  llama  down  to  sleep," 

or  else  they  wonder  about  it  as  I  did  and  feel  it 
as  a  nightly  terror,  for  the  prayer  is  most  terrifying 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS     45 

in  itself  with  its  suggestion  of  a  prowling  Death 
always  ready  to  pounce;  and  the  God  who  seems 
only  waiting  to  snatch  a  soul  away  from  Death 
is  not  much  more  reassuring.  So  I  quaked  with 
fear  as  I  said  it,  and  if  I  forgot  a  word  or  coughed 
or  sneezed  in  the  midst  of  it  I  was  panic-stricken, 
and  for  fear  I  had  offended  God  would  hastily 
apologize;  and  as  I  often  had  colds,  my  prayers 
were  punctuated  with,  "I  beg  your  pardon,  God," 
or  "I  am  very  sorry,  God,  I  tried  not  to  cough," 
would  be  gasped  out  after  I  was  purple  in  the  face 
from  trying  to  keep  it  back. 

When  I  asked  what  my  soul  was  I  was  told  it 
was  part  of  me  that  I  could  not  see,  and  this 
puzzled  me  greatly,  for  I  could  see  all  the  rest  of 
me,  even  my  back,  and  the  top  of  my  head  I  had 
managed  to  screw  a  view  of  in  the  duplex  mirror. 
I  wondered  what  my  soul  could  be,  until  one  day 
when  I  was  taken  to  a  museum  and  saw  a  skeleton 
I  found  the  solution.  Papa  told  me  it  was  the 
inside  framework  of  a  man,  the  part  of  him  that 
was  left  after  he  died.  The  Boned  Man  I  called 
it  at  first,  and  then,  when  I  heard  there  was  one 
inside  me,  too,  I  knew  of  course,  that  must  be  the 
soul,  the  part  I  asked  God  to  keep. 

Before  this  I  had  thought  of  Death  as  a  sort  of 
purple-black  ghost  with  long-reaching  arms,  like 
the  huge  shadows  that  waved  across  my  ceiling 


46  UNA  MARY 

when  the  gas  flickered  in  the  wind  at  night.  Often 
I  have  lain,  almost  paralyzed  with  terror,  watch 
ing  them  with  awful  fascination  until  I  could  bear 
it  no  longer,  and  would  shout  that  I  wanted  a 
drink  of  water;  for  as  soon  as  some  one  came  into 
the  room  the  terror  seemed  to  go  and  they  were 
just  ordinary  shadows  again.  Sometimes  I  heard 
the  far-off  whistle  of  a  train,  and  that,  too,  seemed 
to  make  the  shadows  normal  at  once.  How  I  used 
to  strain  my  ears  for  a  train!  At  the  farm  where 
we  boarded  in  the  summer  I  slept  in  a  "  trundle- 
bed."  During  the  day  it  was  pushed  under  the 
big  bed  where  Mamma  slept,  but  at  night  it  was 
pulled  out,  all  nicely  made  up  with  the  small  pink- 
and- white  patchwork  quilt,  the  "pitty  kilt,"  as 
my  sister  called  it.  After  I  had  been  tucked  in 
and  the  lamp  turned  low  I  used  to  grab  the  sides 
of  the  large  bed  and  pull  the  " trundle"  back  to 
the  dark  stuffiness  under  it,  almost  smothered, 
but  happy  because  the  ceiling  with  the  Death 
shadows  was  shut  away  from  me. 

After  I  saw  the  skeleton,  Death  became  even 
more  awful,  able  to  slip  one's  flesh  off  one's  bones 
and  leave  the  soul  "naked  and  white."  I  had 
heard  Lizzie  apply  those  adjectives  to  the  Soul, 
and  they  were  certainly  an  accurate  description 
of  a  skeleton. 

I  felt  as  I  said  The  Prayer  before  going  to  bed, 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS  47 

that  Death  was  more  than  likely  to  appear  during 
the  night — The  Prayer  gave  no  hint  of  his  being 
able  to  come  in  the  daytime — so  each  night  I  was 
careful,  as  soon  as  I  had  taken  off  my  stockings 
— I  kept  them  on  while  I  said  my  prayers — to 
scramble  into  bed  as  quickly  as  possible  in  order 
to  hide  my  bare  feet  under  the  bedclothes  and  so 
prevent  Death's  catching  hold  of  them.  I  had 
gotten  the  idea  that  he  could  not  lay  hold  of  my 
skeleton  through  clothes  but  had  to  find  a  spot  of 
bare  skin  to  begin  on,  and  if  he  once  got  hold  of 
even  a  single  toe  I  was  sure  one  pull  would  be 
enough — out  would  come  my  bones,  leaving  my 
body  turned  inside  out  like  an  empty  glove. 

I  was  in  a  panic  if  I  woke  at  night  to  find  the 
bedclothes  kicked  off.  I  was  sure  it  was  the  Imp 
who  pulled  them  off  and,  as  soon  as  I  had  bundled 
them  over  me  again,  would  clutch  my  feet  to  see  if 
the  skinning  process  had  begun.  I  never  thought 
of  my  head  and  hands  as  bare  skin;  they  belonged 
uncovered;  and  mercifully  my  long-sleeved,  long- 
legged  nightclothes  left  only  the  tips  of  my  toes 
which  could  possibly  get  uncovered;  though  even 
the  feeling  of  comparative  safety  this  gave  me 
never  reconciled  me  to  those  awful  canton  flannel 
night  drawers,  like  a  boy's. 

In  the  summer  I  often  went  barefoot.  It  was 
quite  safe  in  the  daytime,  of  course;  but  it  hap- 


48  UNA  MARY 

pened  several  times  when  we  were  on  picnics  that 
the  sun  set  before  we  got  home,  so  I  sat,  tailor  fash 
ion,  to  cover  up  my  feet,  and,  if  I  had  to  walk  at  all, 
ran  instead,  as  if  I  were  running  on  red-hot  iron. 
And  once  I  tied  my  feet  up  in  handkerchiefs;  but 
that  was  an  especially  terrible  picnic  in  a  dark,  dank 
sort  of  cavern,  called  Purgatory,  cut  by  a  water 
fall  between  narrow,  dripping  walls  of  rock.  It 
was  just  the  place  for  Death  to  lurk,  and  as  the 
shadows  lengthened,  crawling  their  way  from  rock 
to  rock,  and  it  grew  darker  and  darker  and  the 
waterfall  muttered  louder  and  louder,  my  teeth 
fairly  chattered  from  chill  and  terror,  while  my 
feet  turned  a  horrible  purple,  almost  the  color  of 
Death's  shadows,  until  I  felt  as  if  Death  himself 
were  getting  inside  me,  as  if  I  were  turning  into 
Death.  Then  I  began  to  cry,  but  all  I  could  say 
was:  "My  feet  are  so  cold!"  Death,  I  felt,  could 
get  me  at  once  if  I  said  I  was  afraid.  So  Papa 
gave  me  two  handkerchiefs,  and  in  them  I  swathed 
and  knotted  my  feet,  even  having  to  walk  on  one 
knot,  but  the  hurting  of  that  seemed  rapture. 

I  was  less  afraid  of  Death  for  myself  than  for 
my  family.  If  he  came  for  me  I  felt  I  should 
be  able  to  cope  with  him  in  some  way,  but  the 
others  might  be  asleep  or,  without  me  to  help 
them,  might  not  know  what  to  do.  So  each 
morning  as  soon  as  I  was  awake  I  ran  into  Mam- 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS     49 

ma's  room,  my  heart  in  my  mouth  as  I  opened 
the  door  for  fear  I  should  find  only  skeletons 
lying  there. 

That  prayer  was  the  black  terror  of  my  child 
hood.  Of  course  one  word  to  my  parents  about 
it  would  have  cleared  up  all  my  fears;  but  chil 
dren  never  do  tell  about  those  things,  and,  besides 
that  queer  natural  reserve,  I  knew  it  was  the  for 
bidden  subject  as  it  had  to  do  with  God.  I  felt 
if  it  was  wrong  for  me  to  ask  questions  about  it, 
it  must  be  equally  wrong  to  even  speak  of  it. 
Then,  again,  I  was  sure  it  was  like  all  the  other 
things  Una  Mary  felt — no  one  else  could  under 
stand  them.  And  it  was  not  until  I  was  eight 
years  old  that  I  knew  other  people  had  religions, 
too.  so  I  never  told  any  one  about  my  religious 
theories  until  after  I  was  grown  up. 

God,  as  I  first  remember  thinking  about  Him  at 
all,  I  rather  took  for  granted  and  placed  in  some 
far-off  world  called  Heaven,  from  which  He  occa 
sionally  looked  over  the  rim  of  mountains  that 
bounded  Heaven  on  the  Earth  side  to  see  what 
we  were  doing  here  below.  Only  the  upper  part 
of  His  head,  from  the  bridge  of  His  nose  up,  ever 
showed  above  the  mountains.  He  was  just  fore 
head,  eyes,  and  flowing  white  hair  that  mixed  in 
with  the  clouds.  My  sister  thought  there  was  a 
Mrs.  God  who  lived  with  Him  in  Heaven,  but  I 


50  UNA  MARY 

was  doubtful  about  her.  I  was  sure  only  of  the 
Angels  and  Santa  Claus  as  His  companions. 

I  had  seen  pictures  of  Angels  and  there  was 
always  one  on  the  Christmas  tree,  so  I  knew  ex 
actly  how  they  looked,  lovely  little  girls  with  golden 
curls  and  white  wings  growing  out  of  the  shoul 
ders  of  their  nightgowns.  Two  children  I  knew 
had  died,  and  Lizzie  said  thay  had  gone  to  be 
Angels  in  Heaven.  I  could  quite  understand  it 
must  be  true,  as  they  had  had  curls  of  the  right 
golden  color  and  always  wore  real  nightgowns 
like  ladies. 

One  of  my  griefs  about  my  own  hated  night- 
clothes,  with  legs  instead  of  skirts,  was  that  be 
cause  of  them  and  my  short-cropped  hair  I  knew 
if  Death  did  succeed  in  catching  me  some  night, 
whatever  happened  to  little  boys  would  have  to 
be  my  fate,  and  I  did  so  long  to  be  a  lovely  Angel, 
flying  around  in  the  sky  and  eating  nothing  but  the 
wonderful,  airy  sort  of  pudding  my  grandmother 
knew  how  to  make,  called  Angel's  Food.  Once 
when  I  went  to  visit  her,  because  Mamma  was  sick, 
I  asked  for  it  every  day  for  dessert,  thinking  I 
would  get  all  I  could  of  it  in  this  world,  anyway. 
It  was  always  made  in  a  rabbit-shaped  mould, 
and  I  poured  cream  over  it  from  a  pitcher  that 
was  shaped  like  a  cow  with  its  tail  curled  over  its 
back  for  a  handle. 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND  THE  ANGELS     51 

The  Angel  idea  had  in  it  one  element  of  comfort 
even  for  me,  as  it  seemed  to  show  that  God  wanted 
to  keep  and  bury  in  the  ground — I  knew  the  dead 
were  buried — only  the  inside  part,  the  skeleton 
Soul,  so  perhaps  the  outside  still  belonged  to  the 
people  themselves,  and  after  the  heavy  soul  had 
been  slipped  out,  the  body,  now  light  as  a  soap- 
bubble,  could  sail  off  into  the  sky  to  stay  with 
Santa  Claus  forever. 

I  wondered  if  all  people  had  Una  Mary  selves 
inside  them.  If  so,  perhaps  it  was  they  who  sailed 
off  dressed  in  the  outsides,  for  surely  Una  Mary 
had  to  go  somewhere.  She  could  not  possibly 
ever  end,  and  I  did  not  much  care  what  happened 
to  Una.  What  puzzled  me  most  was  why  God 
preferred  to  keep  the  ugly  soul  part.  In  His 
place,  I  should  have  taken  the  Angel  outsides. 

One  day  Lizzie  told  me  about  Cherubim-and- 
Seraphim.  I  thought  it  was  all  one  magnificent 
word,  Angels  with  many  pairs  of  wings,  and  I  won 
dered  where  the  wings  grew  out  and  how  they  flew 
with  so  many.  It  was  still  one  of  the  unsolved 
problems  when  Papa  and  Agnes  took  me  to  the 
circus.  Then,  as  the  circus  ladies  came  out,  bal 
anced  lightly,  standing  first  on  one  foot  then  on 
the  other,  on  the  backs  of  snow-white  horses,  their 
stiff,  spangled  tulle  skirts  a  glittering,  snowy  flutter 
around  their  hips,  I  cried  out  loud  in  excitement: 


52  UNA  MARY 

"Those  must  be  the  Cherubim-and-Seraphim. 
And  they're  real  Angels,  with  wings  all  round 
their  waists,  and  their  nightgowns  have  legs  just 
like  mine,  only  tighter."  And  then,  when  they  rose 
in  the  air  and  went  lightly  through  the  huge  disks 
the  clowns  held  up  to  stop  them,  dropping  unerr 
ingly  on  the  other  side  to  the  backs  of  their  gal 
loping  steeds,  that  was  flying,  indeed,  and  they 
could  go  where  they  pleased,  through  anything. 

When  I  see  them  now,  the  hard-featured,  painted 
circus  riders,  I  hope  some  of  them  have  the  com 
pensation  of  knowing  that  to  most  children  they  are 
high  Celestial  Beings,  for  one  miraculous  day  con 
descending  to  this  earth.  Much  should  be  for 
given  and  endured  for  the  sake  of  such  high  des 
tiny. 

One  rider  had  a  poodle  who  rode  and  jumped 
with  her,  so  clearly  there  were  both  horses  and 
dogs  in  Heaven,  and,  probably,  all  the  other  ani 
mals,  too,  and  as  I  cared  passionately  for  animals, 
Heaven  from  that  day  on  became  a  much  more 
desirable  goal,  a  glorified  Circus  World,  with  all  the 
glamour  of  the  Christmas  tree,  combined  with  An 
gels,  animals,  and  toys  come  to  life.  For  that  was 
what  the  clowns  seemed  to  me,  with  their  painted 
white  faces — living  rag  dolls,  full  of  humor  and 
with  the  same  habit  of  falling  about  in  grotesque 
attitudes,  then  looking  up  with  a  stare  of  comic 


GOD,  DEATH,  AND   THE  ANGELS     53 

surprise  that  was  the  charm  of  those  comfortable, 
disjointed  things,  except  these  transcendent  dolls 
had  a  taking-you-into-their-confidence  sort  of  wink, 
which  I  have  missed  in  rag  dolls  ever  since.  And 
all  these  glittering  wonder  people  played  the  most 
marvellous  games  and  did  tricks  that  were  sim 
ply  amazing,  and  I  loved  the  color  and  the  splendid 
dresses. 

With  my  style  of  nightclothes  there  seemed 
some  hope  of  my  becoming  a  Cherubim-and- 
Seraphim,  so  for  months  after  the  circus  I  took 
two  pieces  of  string  to  bed  with  me,  and  each  night 
after  I  was  safely  under  the  covers  I  rolled  my  night 
drawers  tightly  around  each  leg,  like  a  furled  um 
brella,  and  tied  them  securely  at  the  ankles,  so  in 
case  Death  succeeded  in  catching  me  my  legs 
would  be  ready  to  float  off  like  circus  tights,  and 
I  was  sure,  from  the  feeling  of  my  hip-bones,  that 
incipient  wings  were  there  ready  to  burst  out  at 
once  and  surround  me  like  one  of  those  fans  that 
looks  like  an  ivory  stick  until  you  press  a  spring, 
when  it  instantly  flies  open,  a  lovely,  pleated  ro 
sette  of  silk  with  the  ivory  stick  for  its  handle — 
Mamma  had  a  white  one  that  she  took  to  parties. 


CHAPTER  IV 
CERTAIN   GAPS  IN  MY  INFORMATION 


afternoon  when  I  was  still  so  small  he  had 
to  drag  me  in  a  toy  express-wagon,  my  father 
took  me  to  some  deep  woods.  It  is  the  first  time 
I  remember  the  country  for  itself,  and  the  sense 
of  the  Enchanted  Forest  came  to  me  then  never 
to  leave  me,  though  never  since  have  I  seen  woods 
as  radiantly  hushed  and  miraculous  as  those 
seemed,  though  for  years  I  hunted  for  them. 

It  was  like  another  life,  that  sudden  plunge 
from  the  sunlit  commonplace  into  the  emerald, 
gold-flecked  shadow  and  whispering  silence,  into 
its  mystery,  calm,  and  aloofness.  I  instantly  felt 
singularly  at  home,  as  if  I  had  come  to  a  place  I 
already  knew,  the  place  where  Una  Mary  lived. 
I  could  almost  understand  what  the  birds  twit 
tered  to  say  as  they  fluttered  among  the  branches, 
and  all  the  pungent  odors  compounded  of  damp 
earth,  sun-steeped  pine,  and  prodigal  luxuriance 
had  wafted  over  me  in  some  dream  life  long  ago. 

What  I  afterward  named  My  Country  dates 

54 


GAPS  IN  MY  INFORMATION         55 

from  this  afternoon  in  the  woods,  with  the  cool, 
green  light  sifting  through  the  leaves,  lighting  the 
marvel-carpeted  ground.  It  was  the  ground  that 
fascinated  me  most  that  day:  the  pine-cones  lying 
on  the  moss,  the  tiny  ferns  and  flowers  growing 
everywhere,  all  new  and  strange  to  me,  for  before 
I  had  seen  only  field  and  garden  flowers.  But 
what  I  remember  best  are  the  mushrooms.  We 
found  them  in  all  shades  of  brown,  yellow,  and  red, 
from  velvet  darks  up  to  the  most  vivid  orange 
scarlet.  But  most  wonderful  of  all  were  the  deep 
purple  ones.  Purple  has  always  been  to  me  the 
mystery  color,  the  magician's  color.  All  the  mush 
rooms  looked  very  wise  and  as  if  they  could  weave 
spells  and  incantations,  but  the  purple  ones  were 
the  Merlins  of  the  wood. 

My  father  was  interested  in  studying  mush 
rooms,  and  this  must  have  been  one  of  his  collect 
ing  trips.  He  probably  told  me  a  great  deal  about 
them  as  they  stand  out  so  vividly  in  my  mind. 
Always  he  was  keen  to  have  me  care  for  nature 
as  he  did,  both  scientifically  and  for  its  beauty. 
He  himself  was  by  profession  a  scientist  of  the 
most  rigid  and  exact  type — a  chemist.  He  was 
professor  of  chemistry  in  the  Cincinnati  Univer 
sity,  but  temperamentally  he  was  a  poet,  and  I 
think  what  most  appealed  to  him  in  science  was 
the  tremendous  swing  its  theories  allowed  to  the 


56  UNA  MARY 

imagination.  His  was  the  mathematical  side  of 
chemistry,  and  where  are  there  wider  and  bolder 
flights  into  the  unknown  and  more  careful  ladders 
built  to  reach  the  moon  than  in  the  higher  branches 
of  mathematics? 

He  devoted  himself  to  science  not  as  a  career, 
but  embraced  it  as  a  cause,  the  great  cause  of 
Reason  that  had  risen  in  those  days  when  Darwin 
was  still  alive,  a  new  Religion  on  the  earth  de 
throning  the  systems  of  the  past;  and  to  it  he 
dedicated  all  his  powers,  taking  an  active  part, 
writing,  and  lecturing  in  the  science-and-religion 
controversies. 

I  think  the  theory  of  evolution  had  a  great  deal 
to  do  with  my  own  bringing  up,  was  responsible 
really  for  religion's  being  carefully  left  out  and  a 
great  deal  of  science  given  to  me  in  its  place. 
Natural  history  was  taught  me,  not  as  miscella 
neous  names  and  detached  facts,  but  cosmically, 
showing  the  growth,  relationship,  and  interdepen 
dence  of  creatures  and  their  environment.  When 
I  was  a  mere  baby  I  knew  men  had  had  apes  for 
ancestors,  and  I  stuck  to  my  belief  in  spite  of  the 
unbelief  of  all  the  other  children. 

I  remember  one  little  girl,  the  daughter  of  a 
Presbyterian  minister,  was  forbidden  to  play  with 
me  in  consequence.  She  said  her  father  said,  "It 
was  worse  than  hearing  swear  words,"  and,  having 


GAPS  IN  MY  INFORMATION         57 

delivered  this  shaft,  she  stuck  out  her  tongue  and 
flounced  off  with  great  ostentation  of  virtue.  I 
can  see  her  still,  in  a  blue  gingham  dress  standing 
straight  out  around  her  knees  and  a  hat  wobbly 
with  poppies. 

I  had  a  general  idea  of  the  different  geological 
periods  and  the  changes  the  earth  had  gone  through; 
but,  with  all  the  rich  variety  of  information  which 
was  given  to  me,  there  were  strange  gaps,  impor 
tant  links  taken  for  granted.  For  instance,  it  was 
not  until  I  was  in  school  that  I  heard  for  the  first 
time  in  geography  class  that  the  earth  turned 
around  each  day  while  the  sun  stood  still.  The 
obvious  mistake  was  as  great  a  shock  to  my  intel 
ligence  as  it  had  been  to  the  contemporaries  of 
Galileo,  and  I  gravely  assured  the  teacher  it  could 
not  be  true  and,  as  a  final  argument,  said  my  father 
had  never  told  me  so  and  he  had  taught  me  all 
about  the  earth.  The  smiling  teacher  told  me  to 
ask  him  about  it  when  I  got  home,  which  I  did. 
And  when  he,  greatly  surprised  to  find  he  had  not 
already  explained  the  matter,  assured  me  it  was 
true  and  told  me  about  the  other  planets  and  their 
movements  around  the  sun,  I  had  one  of  my  most 
terrible  moments  of  readjustment. 

The  full  force  of  the  fact  of  the  earth's  move 
ments  and  the  whirling  of  the  stars  in  their  orbits 
took  hold  of  my  imagination,  and  for  days  I  was 


58  UNA   MARY 

really  giddy  and  seemed  to  feel  the  moving  of  this, 
my  solid  ground,  grown  suddenly  as  unreliable  as 
a  merry-go-round.  I  expected  each  moment  to 
hear  a  crash  as  we  bumped  into  some  other  star, 
and  I  was  really  afraid  when  I  went  up-stairs  that 
I  might  be  caught  off  into  space  by  the  attraction 
of  the  sun;  and  it  was  only  after  Papa  had  ex 
plained  fully  and  illustrated  by  having  me  whirl 
around  my  head  a  pail  full  of  water  at  the  end  of 
a  string,  and  I  saw  how  the  water  stayed  in  even 
when  the  pail  was  upside  down,  that  I  realized 
that  in  the  very  whirling  of  the  earth  lay  my  safety, 
that  it  was  this  which  kept  even  the  upside-down 
Chinese  from  flying  off  into  space.  This  made 
me  feel  a  little  steadier  on  my  feet  and  gave  me 
the  courage  to  try  an  experiment.  I  went  into 
the  back  yard  and,  after  carefully  marking  around 
each  foot  with  chalk,  jumped  as  high  as  I  could  to 
see  if  I  came  down  again  in  exactly  the  same  spot 
or  if  the  earth  slid  under  me  a  little  while  I  was  in 
the  air.  Convinced  at  last  that  my  environment 
at  least  was  stationary,  I  calmed  down  after  what 
had  been  a  week  of  most  intense  excitement. 

My  father  and  I  were  great  companions,  partly 
because  we  were  very  congenial  and  also  because 
my  mother  was  most  of  the  time  an  invalid  and  all 
of  her  spare  strength  had  to  go  to  my  sister,  who 
was  then  so  delicate  that  Lizzie  said  we  could 


GAPS  IN  MY  INFORMATION         59 

never  raise  her.  While  Papa  hoped  he  was  train 
ing  me  to  be  a  scientist,  it  was  really  my  imagina 
tion  and  sense  of  beauty  that  were  stimulated  by 
his  own  unconscious  enthusiasm;  and  he  made  me 
long,  instead,  to  be  a  painter. 

It  is  curious  how  often  science  and  the  arts  run 
through  families,  cropping  out  in  alternate  gen 
erations.  I  have  noticed  it  again  and  again  in 
reading  biographies,  which  would  seem  to  prove 
that  really  they  are  of  the  same  spirit,  these  two 
apparently  opposed  points  of  view,  differing  only 
in  method  and  emphasis. 

One  great  advantage  of  my  training  in  natural 
history  was  that  I  learned  not  to  be  afraid  of  any 
sort  of  creature.  For  the  other  children,  even  the 
boys,  the  world  was  full  of  terrors.  There  were 
many  insects,  especially  the  praying-mantis  and 
green  beetles,  which  to  them  were  "  deadly  pizen" 
even  to  touch,  while  I  was  on  friendly  terms  with 
all  insects  and  collected  beetles  for  years.  That 
it  was  cruel  to  collect  them  never  even  occurred 
to  me;  they  died  so  quietly  in  my  insect  bottle. 
I  was  not  interested  in  them  scientifically,  but 
purely  for  their  color  and  the  strange  patterns  on 
their  backs.  In  the  end  they  appealed  to  me  tre 
mendously,  though  I  began  to  collect  them  for 
quite  a  different  reason. 

When  I  was  nine  years  old  I  heard  a  story  about 


60  UNA  MARY 

Darwin's  boyhood  which  influenced  me  greatly.  It 
was  said  that  when  he  was  nine  years  old  a  gypsy, 
in  telling  his  fortune,  told  him  if  he  collected  beetles 
he  was  sure  to  become  famous  when  he  grew  up. 
Papa,  when  I  asked  him,  said  Darwin  had  become 
one  of  the  most  famous  men  who  ever  lived,  so  it 
seemed  to  me,  as  I  was  the  same  age,  a  good  plan 
to  follow  his  example  and  collect  beetles,  too. 
Fame  seemed  wonderfully  attractive.  I  felt  it 
would  be  like  being  Una  Mary,  and  the  whole 
world  would  then  see  what  I  really  was  and  no 
longer  think  I  was  merely  what  Una  seemed. 

In  the  natural  history  I  learned,  there  was  always 
a  conspicuous  gap.  It  was  on  the  subject  of  birth. 
For  with  all  the  breadth  of  view  Transcendental 
Boston  had  given  my  father  and  mother  was 
blended  their  inheritance  of  the  old  Puritanical 
reticence  on  the  origins  of  life.  I  was  told  abso 
lutely  nothing.  It  seemed  like  religion,  for  when 
I  asked  questions  I  was  told  it  was  something  I 
could  not  understand,  but  that  I  should  know  when 
I  grew  up  where  kittens  and  babies  came  from. 
But  when  I  was  only  six  I  had  found  out  for  my 
self,  for  that  Easter  Lizzie  gave  me  an  Easter  egg 
with  a  small  chicken  inside  it,  and  a  rabbit  so  fully 
hatched  that  only  half  the  shell  was  left,  glued  to 
his  hind  leg,  and  in  it  he  sat  up  and  begged  like 
a  dog.  I  already  knew  that  chickens  and  birds 


GAPS  IN  MY  INFORMATION         61 

came  from  eggs,  and  the  summer  before  had  found 
some  hatching  turtles,  so  if  rabbits  came  in  the 
same  way  it  was  probable  that  everything  else  did 
and  there  must  be  babies'  eggs  somewhere.  I  kept 
my  eyes  open  for  one  of  their  nests  in  the  hope  of 
finding  a  hatching  boy  I  could  take  home  for  a 
brother. 

Harry  was  given  the  stork-and-basket  solution, 
which  satisfied  him  completely,  because,  as  he 
pointed  out,  babies  always  slept  in  baskets.  But 
even  this  conclusive  proof  failed  to  convince  me, 
as  no  one  I  knew  had  ever  seen  a  stork  in  Cin 
cinnati  except  at  the  Zoo,  and  surely  the  single 
sleepy,  one-legged  bird  in  the  cage  there  was  inad 
equate  to  carry  all  the  baby  creatures  that  arrived 
each  day,  and,  besides,  the  baskets  babies  slept  in 
had  no  handles  for  the  stork  to  carry  them  by 
and  might  as  plausibly  be  nests  instead  to  hold 
the  eggs. 

The  next  year  my  second  sister  was  born.  For 
several  days  I  had  been  visiting  at  Harry's,  spend 
ing  the  nights  there  as  well  as  the  days,  and  one 
morning,  just  as  we  had  succeeded  in  building  a 
Chinese  pagoda  of  cards  eight  stories  high,  Lizzie 
blew  it  all  down  by  the  draught  she  made  hurrying 
into  the  room  to  tell  me  to  come  home  because  I 
had  a  new  sister.  I  was  furious  at  having  the 
pagoda  knocked  down  and  much  more  concerned 


62  UNA  MARY 

over  that  than  at  having  a  sister.  I  took  no  in 
terest  in  a  sister — if  it  had  been  a  brother  it  would 
have  been  different — but  by  the  time  my  hat  and 
coat  had  been  put  on,  and  my  rubbers,  which  al 
ways  stuck  at  the  heel,  everybody  else  seemed  so 
pleased  about  her  that  I  felt,  perhaps,  it  would  not 
be  so  bad,  after  all;  anyway,  she  could  be  the 
Little  Bear  when  we  played  the  Three  Bears. 

Lizzie  told  me  she  was  a  very  pretty  baby,  and 
when  I  saw  her  she  really  did  look  very  cunning 
and  her  fascinating  little  fists  had  real  tiny  finger 
nails.  Those  finger  nails  won  me  completely,  and 
I  was  her  slave  from  that  day  on.  I  taught  myself 
to  knit  in  order  to  make  a  cap  for  her  and  prac 
tised  making  strange  facefc  and  noises  with  which 
to  surprise  her.  She  was  always  most  apprecia 
tive  of  them,  receiving  them  first  with  a  blank 
stare  and  then  a  wild  gurgle  of  delight.  To  her 
I  was  as  comic  as  a  circus  clown,  and  my  mere 
appearance  made  her  dance  and  crow  with  expecta 
tion. 

The  day  she  was  born,  as  soon  as  I  had  fully 
examined  her  I  dashed  down  to  the  cellar  to  hunt 
in  the  ash  barrel  for  the  pieces  of  the  shell  from 
which  she  had  hatched,  for  she  looked  so  big  I  was 
sure  it  must  be  simply  huge,  even  larger  than  the 
ostrich  egg  in  Agnes's  cabinet.  But  not  a  scrap 
of  shell  could  I  find,  so  I  concluded  it  must  have 


GAPS   IN  MY  INFORMATION         63 

been  burned  up  in  the  open  fire  in  Mamma's  room 
in  front  of  which  the  baby  nest  stood  in  which  she 
had  been  hatched.  It  seemed  quite  natural  that 
baby  nests  should  be  baskets  trimmed  with  mus 
lin  and  lace.  Swallows'  nests  were  most  carefully 
woven  of  sticks  almost  like  basketwork,  and  the 
birds  always  lined  them  with  the  softest,  fluffiest 
things  they  could  find,  so,  of  course,  human  par 
ents  would  make  the  nest  to  hold  their  babies  as 
beautiful  as  possible. 

A  few  days  later,  when  Harry  and  I  were  play 
ing  at  his  house,  in  a  closet  we  happened  to  open 
for  hide-and-seek  we  found  a  brand-new  baby 
nest  all  pink  inside.  Otfrs  was  blue.  In  a  few 
weeks  Harry,  too,  had  a  baby  sister,  and  the 
strange  old  woman  with  false  teeth  and  a  black, 
frizzed  bang,  who  was  at  our  house  when  our  baby 
came,  was  there  to  take  care  of  her.  I  always 
saw  her  at  every  house  where  there  was  a  new 
baby,  so  I  supposed  she  must  be  the  person  who 
sold  baby  eggs  to  everybody.  I  only  wished  she 
had  some  way  of  telling  beforehand  whether  they 
were  going  to  hatch  out  as  boys  or  girls. 


CHAPTER  V 
MY  COUNTRY 

T  CANNOT  remember  the  time  when  Edward 
•*•  was  not  part  of  my  inner  life.  He  was  a  boy 
older  than  I.  I  think  he  must  have  been  about 
ten  years  old  and  dressed  in  a  dark-blue  Norfolk- 
jacket  suit  with  a  red  tie  when  I  first  created  him. 
He  had  brown  hair  and  a  fascinating  way  of  snap 
ping  his  eyes  when  he  laughed.  I  do  not  know 
whether  he  was  some  one  I  first  saw  and  then  took 
over  to  be  Una  Mary's  invisible  friend,  whether 
he  was  pure  invention,  or  a  composite  of  various 
people  I  admired — I  seem  to  detect  traces  of  Rich 
ard  about  him.  But  in  the  beginning  he  was  the 
sort  of  boy  I  have  described  and  my  perpetual  com 
panion  in  all  my  imaginary  life.  A  cousin  of  mine, 
when  she  was  a  small  child,  had  a  friend  she  called 
The  General  who  was  always  with  her,  invisible, 
of  course,  to  every  one  else,  but  to  her  so  real  that 
she  had  to  have  a  chair  for  him  beside  her  wherever 
she  was  and  a  place  set  at  table.  Edward  was 
as  real  to  me  as  The  General  was  to  her,  but  as  I 

64 


MY  COUNTRY  65 

•*iever  spoke  of  him  no  one  else  ever  knew  about 
him,  and  I  never  felt  he  was  near  me  when  I  was 
just  Una.  He  was  only  there  when  I  became  Una 
Mary. 

As  I  grew  older  he  changed,  growing  less  and  less 
vivid  in  outward  appearance,  until  he  became  a 
sort  of  detached  personality  with  scarcely  any  out 
ward  form,  a  feeling  rather  than  a  mental  vision, 
but  quite  distinct  in  his  effect  upon  me  from  the 
memory  of  any  real  person  I  knew.  He  was  more 
personal  and  much  more  intense.  I  loved  him 
better  than  any  one  except  my  family,  and  he 
seemed  to  belong  to  me  even  more  than  they  did, 
for  he  was  wholly  mine  while  they  belonged  to 
each  other  as  well. 

He  was  the  one  person  who  could  at  all  coun 
teract  the  influence  of  my  Imp,  for  sometimes  when 
the  Imp  was  simply  crushing  me  by  telling  me  of 
my  defects  Edward  would  rush  to  the  rescue  and 
tell  me  not  to  listen,  as  the  Imp  was  only  talking 
about  Una,  who  did  not  count  at  all,  but  that  he, 
Edward,  knew  how  lovely  Una  Mary  was  and  she 
was  the  only  part  of  me  that  really  mattered. 
Often  when  the  Imp  had  made  me  especially  mis 
erable,  as  he  did  one  day  when  he  pointed  out  to  me 
that  all  the  other  baby  carriages  in  the  park  had 
straw  canopies  over  the  babies'  heads  while  the 
carriage  our  baby  was  in  had  nothing  but  a  parasol 


66  UNA  MARY 

covered  with  muslin  swinging  over  it,  Edward 
told  me  to  turn  myself  into  Una  Mary  as  quickly 
as  possible,  which  I  did,  when  everything  at  once 
had  quite  a  different  aspect.  The  parasol,  instead 
of  being  a  family  disgrace,  became  a  lovely  flutter 
of  light  and  filmy,  broken  shadows  as  exquisite  as 
if^X.cloud  had  floated  down  to  shade  my  sister's 
head,  while  the  Imp  shrank  back  into  nothingness 
and  in  his  place  stood  Edward,  loving,  as  I  did, 
the  new-found  beauty  of  the  parasol. 

Why  he  was  named  Edward  I  have  forgotten. 
He  simply  always  was  Edward,  and  that  was  his 
only  name  until  I  was  seven  years  old,  when,  for 
the  first  time,  I  heard  of  Christ.  I  liked  the  sound 
of  the  name  for  some  reason,  and  the  only  other 
thing  I  heard  besides  the  name  was  that  he  was  an 
invisible  person,  so  it  seemed  to  me  just  possible, 
as  Edward  was  also  invisible,  that  they  might  be 
the  same,  and  I  renamed  Edward,  Edward-Christ. 

It  was  during  this  period  that  he  lost  his  Nor 
folk-jacket  outward  appearance  and  became  a 
vague  young  man  of  about  nineteen,  his  face  being 
all  I  really  saw  of  him. 

He  was  a  great  friend  of  my  various  heroes  from 
books  and  "  Princes  in  Disguise,"  and  it  was  he 
who  presented  them  at  my  court  where  I  was,  of 
course,  "The  Princess  Una  Mary,"  throned  in  a 
Palace  of  Enchantment.  It  is  with  My  Country 


MY  COUNTRY  67 

that  Edward  is  most  closely  associated,  the  imag 
inary  world  where  he  and  Una  Mary  lived,  which 
began  to  form  soon  after  the  trip  into  the  woods 
when  Papa  and  I  collected  mushrooms.  It  grew 
from  the  impression  the  woods  made  upon  me, 
combined  with  a  pond  where  white  water-lilies 
floated  and  a  little  brook  I  had  seen  in  the  coun 
try  cascading  over  mossy  rocks  to  silent  pools 
where  slender  ferns  trailed  their  delicate  fingers 
in  the  clear  water.  It  had,  too,  the  glamour  of  a 
Christmas  tree  and  the  splendor  of  jewels  and  my 
Algerian  sash,  and  there  were  castles  perched  on 
all  the  hilltops. 

It  was  the  land  of  magical  beauty,  high  adven 
ture,  incredible  courage,  hair-breadth  escapes,  and 
romantic  attachments  expressed  in  magnificent 
speeches  to  Una  Mary,  who  replied  to  them  with 
gracious  condescension;  where  Edward  and  I  wore 
robes  of  samite  and  cloth  of  gold  and  in  all  our 
adventures  had  the  luck  of  a  Seventh  Son;  where 
revenge  was  sweet  and  dramatically  swift — cross 
nurses  were  at  once  boiled  alive  in  olive-oil  from 
which  they  emerged  unscathed  at  their  first  kind 
word  of  repentance;  where  all  our  wishes  came 
true  in  a  flash  and  we  "lived  upon  strawberries, 
sugar,  and  cream"  supplemented  by  Hermit  cook 
ies  made  after  my  grandmother's  recipe  and  cut 
out  with  a  rooster-shaped  cutter — the  land,  in 


68  UNA  MARY 

other  words,  of  my  interior  reality,  the  sum  total 
of  all  my  desires. 

It  was  a  place  well  suited  to  the  romance  of  tlje 
set  of  chessmen  that  had  been  one  of  my  moth 
er's  wedding  presents — she  herself  had  carved  the 
board,  with  leaves  all  around  the  edge,  on  which 
she  and  Papa  played  chess.  But  the  board  always 
seemed  too  circumscribed,  so  it  was  mainly  to  pro 
vide  another  scene  for  their  activities  that  I  in 
vented  the  rug  part  of  My  Country.  The  chess 
men  were  really  beautiful  pieces  made  of  ivory 
and  finished  with  a  lavish  affection  for  detail  which, 
to  my  mind,  was  proof  of  their  artistic  perfection. 
One  could  even  tell  whom  the  Queen  was  to  marry 
by  counting  "Rich  man,  poor  man,  beggar  man, 
thief"  on  the  buttons  of  her  cloak,  and  it  always 
came  out,  as  it  naturally  should,  that  the  beggar 
man  was  to  be  her  fate,  though  there  was  always 
the  nervous  moment  when  it  might  have  been  the 
thief. 

TJie  Kings,  Queens,  and  Bishops  had  great  dig 
nity,  and  the  Knights  were  full  of  suppressed  dash, 
while  the  Castles  were  very  solid  and  battlemented 
in  a  satisfactory  way.  My  favorite  dress  had 
scallops  on  it  just  the  shape  of  the  battlements. 
The  Pawns  met  the  usual  neglect  of  life  as  far  as 
I  was  concerned  and  were  only  useful  to  kill  off 
in  battle. 


MY  COUNTRY  69 

I  was  allowed  to  play  with  these  wonderful  be 
ings  as  a  great  treat  when  I  had  been  very  good 
or  had  a  cold.  How  I  welcomed  colds,  the  sniffly 
kind,  for  which  one  did  not  have  to  go  to  bed  but 
just  stayed  in  the  house  sipping  hot  lemonade 
and  being  an  invalid,  not  expected  for  those  bliss 
ful  days  "to  give  up"  anything  because  I  was  the 
oldest,  and  allowed  to  play  to  my  heart's  content 
with  the  chessmen  on  the  rug  in  the  parlor! 

That  rug  had  an  important  role  in  the  early 
days  of  My  Country.  It  was  a  Persian  pattern  of 
the  bold  blue  and  yellow  palm-leaf  and  sprawling 
flower  type,  with  much  detail  inside  the  large  forms 
and  endless  touches  of  bright  color,  all  so  well 
proportioned  that  the  effect  of  the  whole  was  a 
rich,  quiet  blue  in  tone.  I  am  glad<  it  was  a  good 
carpet.  With  the  Boston  severity  in  clothes,  my 
family  also  lived  up  to  that  other  Boston  ideal  of 
having  their  household  effects  solid  and  good  in 
line  and  materials. 

When  I  think  of  that  first  house  of  ours,  bare 
and  serviceable,  of  necessity,  furnished  as  it  was 
from  the  salary  of  a  professor  in  a  small  University, 
it  is  with  real  aesthetic  pleasure  that  I  recall  it. 
My  mother  had  the  true  genius  for  arrangement 
and  the  taste  which  rejected  all  that  was  ornate, 
badly  proportioned,  or  poor  in  color.  So,  although 
she  married  at  the  height  of  the  black-walnut 


70  UNA  MARY 

period,  her  few  pieces  of  furniture  were  simple 
and  really  good.  Black  walnut  in  itself  is  a  fine, 
honest  sort  of  wood  if  treated  fairly,  and  they 
still  look  well,  those  tables  and  chairs  of  Mamma's 
first  housekeeping,  combined  though  they  now  are 
with  old  mahogany.  There  is  one  chair  in  par 
ticular.  It  was  designed  by  William  Morris,  an  orig 
inal  " Morris  Chair,"  and  a  really  lovely  thing  it 
still  seems.  I  used  to  sit  for  hours  on  one  of  its 
arms,  my  feet  in  the  seat,  looking  off  into  space, 
making  up  stories  about  My  Country. 

The  rug  was,  I  think,  the  thing  in  the  whole 
house  that  I  liked  best,  and  I  chose  different  parts 
of  its  pattern  for  various  adventures  of  the  chess 
men.  One  part  was  a  place  we  had  been  to  in  the 
summer,  Mount  Vefnon,  N.  H.,  because  down  the 
centre  of  a  le^  on  the  rug  there  went  a  curving 
brown  vein,  broken  by  flowers  in  places,  like  the 
brook  at  Mount  Vernon  that  ran  disappearing 
and  reappearing  in  the  grass  and  daisies  of  the 
meadow  behind  the  barn,  where  the  elm-trees 
grew.  I  had  caught  trout  and  frogs  on  a  bent 
pin  in  that  brook,  and  I  longed  to  have  Edward 
and  the  chessmen  know  the  thrill  of  safely  jerking 
the  flashes  of  wriggling  silver  to  the  bank. 

A  very  yellow  palm-leaf  in  one  corner  of  the 
pattern  was  the  Holy  Land.  I  thought  it  was 
holey,  full  of  holes.  I  had  simply  heard  some  one 


MY  COUNTRY  71 

speak  of  having  been  there  the  winter  before,  and 
the  name  sounded  sunny  and  yellow,  a  cheerful 
sort  of  place,  full  of  caves  in  the  soft  rock.  I 
thought  the  whole  country  must  look  rather  like 
Swiss  cheese  to  deserve  its  name.  The  Holy  Land 
was,  of  course,  simply  infested  by  robbers.  The 
Forty  Thieves  lived  there,  each  with  a  cave  to  him 
self,  all  in  a  row,  and  for  some  reason  it  was  always 
there  that  we  hid  from  pirates. 

The  outside  border  of  the  rug  was  the  sea.  I 
felt  sure,  of  course,  that  the  world  was  bounded 
by  the  sea  and  if  you  sailed  to  the  edge  the  ship 
would  fall  off,  so  the  chessmen  were  always  careful 
not  to  go  beyond  the  second  stripe  of  the  border 
outside.  It  used  to  remind  me  of  Lizzie's  favorite 
hymn.  She  always  sang  it  when  she  was  crochet 
ing  in  the  evenings.  She  crochetec^  the  most  re 
markable  tidies  with  animals  on  them.  She  did 
one  for  me  with  a  cat  on  it  that  had  a  mysterious 
hole  for  an  eye,  and  in  spite  of  there  being  no 
stitch  there  it  never  unravelled,  quite  unlike  my 
own  crocheting.  As  she  sang  I  thought  she  said: 
"God,  the  sailor,  tossing  on  the  deep  blue  sea." 
So  I  thought  of  God  as  taking  summer  vacations 
from  Heaven  and  going,  as  many  of  our  friends 
did,  to  the  seashore,  where  He  went  sailing  all  day 
long.  1  always  pictured  Him  on  a  sloop,  standing 
leaning  against  the  mast,  dressed,  of  course,  in  a 


72  UNA  MARY 

white  sailor  suit  with  a  dark-blue  collar  and  with 
anchors  embroidered  on  his  sleeves.  I  had  a  sailor 
doll  that  was  dressed  so.  I  liked  to  think  of  Him 
there  instead  of  always  up  in  Heaven  and  grew 
very  fond  of  "God,  the  sailor."  He  seemed  so 
much  nearer  to  me  than  God  in  Heaven. 

The  stem  of  one  flower  was  the  Charles  River, 
where  I  had  found  the  turtle  eggs,  and  another  was 
The  Amazon.  Always  that  name  has  fascinated 
me,  The  Amazon,  and  I  feel  sure  the  river  itself  is 
a  tawny  orange  zigzag  with  huge,  many-colored 
leaves  and  flowers  growing  out  of  it  at  unexpected 
angles.  It  was  like  that  on  the  rug,  and  I  chose 
that  particular  stem  to  be  The  Amazon  because 
its  color  was  like  the  sound  of  the  word.  There 
was  another  reason  besides  the  fascination  of  the 
name  itself  which  later  made  me  include  it  in  the 
geography  of  My  Country,  and  that  was  because 
Brazil  was  my  only  association  with  Royalty. 

A  cousin  of  the  Emperor  Dom  Pedro  was  a  stu 
dent  of  my  father's  at  the  University  and  used 
to  come  to  our  house.  Once  the  Emperor  himself 
had  come  to  Cincinnati  and  Papa  had  talked  to 
him.  It  used  to  be  my  favorite  boast  that  my 
father  had  talked  to  an  Emperor,  until  I  met  the 
Johnsons,  whose  father  was  in  the  Diplomatic  Ser 
vice,  and  George  quite  took  the  wind  out  of  my 
sails  by  telling  me  he  had  once  sneezed  as  he  was 
kissing  the  hand  of  an  Empress. 


MY   COUNTRY  73 

This  cousin  of  Dom  Pedro's — I  have  quite  for 
gotten  his  name — one  day  gave  me  a  bottle  of 
cologne.  So  I  thought  of  Royalty  as  bathing 
daily  in  perfumes,  and  The  Amazon,  I  was  sure, 
smelled  like  cologne.  In  fact,  I  had  a  strong  sus 
picion  that  my  bottle  was  simply  filled  with  water 
dipped  from  the  river  itself,  and  when  I  led  my 
chessmen  down  The  Amazon  in  search  of  "  ad 
ventures  in  the  jungle"  I  used,  as  long  as  the  bot 
tle  lasted,  to  sprinkle  a  few  drops  on  my  handker 
chief  and,  as  I  luxuriously  sniffed  it,  felt  we  were 
breathing  the  native  air  of  the  country.  No  river 
of  Lethe,  no  spring  of  Perpetual  Youth  could  be 
as  sweet  as  my  " Waters  of  The  Amazon."  One 
whiff  of  cologne  to  this  day,  of  the  Johann  Maria 
Farina  variety,  brings  back  the  old  rug  in  the  par 
lor  at  home,  and  I  am  Una  Mary,  who  looks  to  the 
world  like  Una,  floating  on  a  magic  bark  down  the 
waters  of  the  river  of  enchantment. 

It  may  have  been  because  of  the  scarcity  of 
ladies  in  the  chess  world  or  because  I  played  so  en 
tirely  with  boys — my  sisters  were  too  small  to  be 
companions  then;  in  any  case,  there  were  very 
few  women  in  My  Country  and  in  the  games  I 
played  there.  I,  as  Una  Mary,  was,  of  course,  the 
heroine,  usually  in  a  totally  masculine  environ 
ment. 

By  the  time  I  was  seven  years  old  My  Country 
,was  a  place  quite  in  itself,  wholly  imaginary  and 


74  UNA  MARY 

no  longer  connected  with  Rug  Geography,  except 
that  I  kept  The  Amazon.  The  largest  part  of  this, 
which  was  properly  My  Country,  was  the  En 
chanted  Forest,  enchanted  with  a  spell  of  magic 
beauty  that  no  great  poet  has  even  been  able  to 
approach,  though  I  think  Spenser  had  the  vision, 
too,  and  in  his  dreams  at  least  knew  what  it  was 
like.  I  was  named  for  the  Una  in  Spenser's  "  Faerie 
Queene,"  so  I  read  and  loved  him  from  an  early 
age.  In  Grimm's  "  Fairy  Tales,"  too,  there  is  here 
and  there  the  true  forest  touch.  I  have  never  seen 
real  woods  as  beautiful  as  these  imaginary  ones  of 
mine,  though  in  a  sun-flecked,  fern-grown  glade, 
with  a  spring  bubbling  in  its  centre,  I  have  occa 
sionally  caught  my  breath,  thinking  I  had  come 
upon  it  at  last,  and  once  at  twilight  in  an  old  Eng 
lish  forest  of  beech-trees,  their  trunks  deep  in  hare 
bells  and  tiny  vines  of  small-leaved  ivy,  in  the  rich, 
many-patterned  shade  of  its  silence,  I  felt  the  fa 
miliar  thrill  of  my  own  Forest  of  Enchantment. 

My  Forest,  where  springs  crystal-clear  bubbled 
from  beds  of  moss  and  frolicked  through  open 
glades,  where  the  white  stag  grazed,  where  there 
were  dark  pools  of  mysterious  black  water  in 
which  the  tall  trees  were  reflected  darkly  as  in 
a  Claude  Lorrain  glass,  and  where  between  the 
trunks  of  the  trees  now  and  then  were  glimpses 
of  shining,  lily-covered  ponds  laughing  in  the  sun- 


MY  COUNTRY  75 

(T* 

light;  and  in  the  Forest  rode  armed  Knights,  their 
steeds  " richly  caparisoned/'  and  ladies  in  silken 
kirtles.  Una  Mary  was  dressed  in  green  velvet 
and  was  always  mounted  on  a  snow-white  palfrey, 
and  Edward  had  a  deep-blue  velvet  mantle  that 
he  wore  flung  carelessly  over  his  armor.  It  made 
a  superb  bit  of  color  as  he  rode  in  the  sun  and 
shadow  of  the  path  before  me,  its  beauty  enhanced 
because  it  was  startlingly  like  an  opera-cloak  I  had 
seen  the  Wonder  Lady  wear.  All  was  splendor 
and  happiness  in  that  hushed  Forest,  and,  best  of 
all  to  me,  the  Imp  was  never  there.  It  was  all 
sacred  from  his  carping  eye. 

On  the  boundary  of  the  Forest  to  the  West  was 
"Over  Seas,'7  a  mixed  tropical  island  of  the  Rob 
inson  Crusoe  type,  plus  all  the  wild  animals  in  the 
Zoo,  with  lotus  and  all  the  gorgeous  flowering  trees 
I  had  seen  pictures  of  and  swamps  full  of  crocodiles 
and  boa-constrictors.  I  barred  out  cannibals  after 
trying  them  for  a  time.  They  seemed  uncomfort 
able  to  have  about,  as  there  were  only  the  people  I 
created  for  them  to  eat  and  they  might  even  catch 
Una  Mary  or  Edward.  I  longed  to  have  them  eat 
up  the  Imp,  but  it  did  not  seem  safe  to  put  him 
in  My  Country  even  to  be  eaten.  He  might  es 
cape  and  be  there  forever  afterward. 

Over  Seas  I  really  made  up  from  a  sense  of  duty, 
for  I  had  heard  " Robinson  Crusoe"  and  the  "Swiss 


76  UNA  MARY 

Family  Robinson"  read  aloud  and  had  been  a  good 
deal  bored  by  them,  but  Mamma  had  said  I  ought 
to  like  them  as  they  were  very  famous  books.  So  I 
made  up  Over  Seas  to  see  if  I  could  get  acclimated 
and  really  like  the  Robinson  Crusoe  world,  but  it 
never  became  a  great  favorite  of  mine.  It  rather 
offended  my  taste  and  was  too  unromantic. 

I  usually  lived,  when  in  My  Country,  not  in  one 
of  my  castles — I  only  held  audiences  or  tourna 
ments  in  them — but  in  the  Castle  Tree,  a  huge, 
spreading  maple  that  grew  in  the  pasture  of  the 
farm  where  we  spent  our  summers.  It  could  only 
be  climbed  by  swinging  up  on  one  of  the  branches 
which  I  could  barely  reach  by  jumping  from  the 
ground  and  then  pulling  myself  up  like  chinning  a 
bar  and  crawling  along  to  the  main  trunk.  Here  I 
lived  in  great  state,  and,  whether  I  was  climbing 
st|ie  real  tree  or  only  sitting  in  imagination  among 
ks  branches,  it  was  always  my  Castle,  my  inmost 
retreat  from  all  the  troubles  and  tribulations  of 
this  world. 

The  very  tip- top  of  the  tree  was  my  watch- 
tower,  from  which  I  could  look  off  "Over  hill  and 
dale,"  like  Sister  Anne  and  other  congenial  spirits, 
and  incidentally  see  what  was  going  on  in  all  parts 
of  the  farm,  ready  at  any  moment  to  stop  being 
the  Princess  Una  Mary  and  scramble  down  to  be 
Una,  riding  on  a  hay  load  or  driving  the  ducks  out 


MY  COUNTRY  77 

of  the  vegetable  garden.  There  was  a  small  crotch 
just  strong  enough  to  hold  me,  and  there,  up  above 
the  leaves,  swaying  with  every  breeze,  I  used  to  sit 
for  hours,  reading.  I  read  the  whole  of  "Ivanhoe" 
and  the  "Last  of  the  Mohicans"  as  I  sat  perched 
up  there,  and  there,  too,  I  fell  hopelessly  in  love 
with  successive  superhuman  heroes  from  Miss 
Young. 

Whenever  I  was  hungry  I  could  let  down  a  basket 
on  a  string  to  be  filled  with  apples  or  doughnuts  by 
the  other  children,  to  whom  it  was  just  an  ordinary 
tree.  They  were  all  too  heavy  to  climb  to  the 
watch-tower  and  used  to  play  among  the  lower 
branches  where  we  had  fixed  a  box  to  hold  the  pro 
visions  the  farmer's  wife  kept  us  supplied  with,  her 
theory  being  that  "growing  things  couldn't  have 
too  much  to  eat."  Whether  they  were  calves  or 
humans,  the  same  rule  held  and  we  absolutely 
agreed  with  her. 

There  were  several  very  pliable  low  branches  and 
these  were  our  horses,  and  on  them  we  solemnly 
sat,  the  boys  astride,  but  I  always  sideways,  like  a 
lady,  and  teetered  up  and  down  a  good  deal  like 
"  Going  to  B anbury  Cross,"  though  to  our  imag 
inations  we  were  leading  Crusaders  to  the  Holy 
Land  or  jousting  in  a  tourney.  Castles,  it  seemed 
to  me,  should  always  be  leaf-green  and  sun-gilt 
with  staircases  of  rough,  purple-gray  bark. 


78  UNA  MARY 

I  had  a  veil  of  magic  that  I  was  early  obliged  to 
invent.  It  was  a  sort  of  atmosphere  I  had  the 
power  of  throwing  round  anything  I  pleased  and  so 
transforming  it  at  once  to  pa^rt  of  My  Country — it 
was  because  of  the  veil  that  only  I  knew  the  maple 
tree  was  a  Castle — and  very  queer  were  some  of 
the  things  included  under  its  spell,  for  even  my 

^catholic  tastes  felt  that  Pat,  the  coachman  next 
door,  to  whom  I  was  devoted,  needed  many  thick 
nesses  of  magic  before  he  quite  belonged  with  my 
Knights  and  Ladies  and  with  the  Wonder  Lady, 

'  who  scarcely  needed  any  veil  at  all  as  she  was  a 
real  born  Countess  in  Germany. 

A  range  of  mountains  formed  the  northern  bound 
ary  of  My  Country  and  behind  these  View  lived. 
One  summer  I  was  much  puzzled,  as  a  group  .of 
people  sat  on  the  hillside  watching  the  sun  set  be 
hind  the  distant  White  Mountains,  by  what  they 
meant  when  they  said  the  View  was  magnificent.,  I 
could  only  see  perfectly  familiar  and  normal  ar 
rangements  of  land  and  sky,  but  with  that  al 
ways-haunting  wonder  as  to  what  lay  behind  the 
mountains.  I  wondered  if  that  could  be  what  they 
called  View,  and  perhaps,  as  they  were  grown 
people,  all  taller  than  I,  they  could  see  over  the 
mountains  and  catch  sight  of  what  I  missed.  So  I 
climbed  a  tree,  where  I  was  lifted  high  above  the 
heads  of  them  all,  and  still  I  could  not  see  beyond 


MY  COUNTRY  79 

or  catch  a  glimpse  of  View.  I  was  sure  that  must 
be  the  name  of  the  strange  something  I  felt,  The 
Wonderful  Presence  in  what  I  saw  before  me.  I 
thought  it  probably  looked,  if  one  could  see  it,  like 
the  stick  Mamma  had  with  the  carving  of  the  head 
of  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountains,  the  stick  that 
'had  been  one  of  my  favorite  toys  since  I  was  a  baby, 
which  had  been  in  turn,  according  to  the  exigencies 
of  the  occasion,  a  doll,  an  Indian's  club,  and  the 
sceptre  of  the  Princess  Una  Mary,  but  which  had 
always  had  for  me  an  uncanny,  powerful  quality  in- 
itself  which  made  me  treat  it  most  respectfully.  The 
great  stone  face  that  it  represented  was,  I  knew, 
somewhere  in  the  mountains,  vast,  rugged,  and  un 
approachable.  Was  that,  if  one  could  find  it,  the 
actual  person  of  View  or  only  a  larger  carving,  a 
mountain-sized  statue  to  represent  him?  I  thought 
it  must  be  a  statue,  for  surely  that  haunting  quality 
I  felt  could  no  more  be  confined  to  one  embodiment 
than  Power,  intangible,  all-pervading  Power,  could 
be  imprisoned  in  one  form  and  place. 
v  That  same  summer  I  watched  the  cloud  shadows 
float  over  the  country,  and  though  it  was  explained 
to  me  that  they  were  shadows  cast  by  the  clouds,  I 
was  sure  it  must  be  a  mistake,  for  how  could  any 
thing  in  the  sky  cast  shadows?  One  had  to  be  on 
the  earth  for  that.  So  it  seemed  to  me  these  shad 
ows  must  be  the  shadows  of  invisible  beings,  and 


So  *  UNA  MARY 

.when  they  came  to  me  from  over  the  peaks  of 
'  mountains  I  felt  they  were  cast  by  View,  and  in  the 
awe  of  their  passing  over  me  I  caught  my  breath  as 
the  dark  coolness  slipped  under  my  feet  and  then 
enveloped  everything  about  me,  and  I  almost  felt 
that  through  it  I  could  see  View  Himself.  He  be 
came  the  central  mystery  and  Unknown  Spirit  of 
My  Country,  the  magic  Over  King  of  it  all,  and  al 
ways  I  thought  of  him  as  View  until  I  was  eleven 
years  old,  when  suddenly  I  was  sure  he  must  be 
really  God.  Still,  I  feel  God  is  nearer  to  me  in  the 
mountains  than  in  any  other  place.  I,  too,  "Lift 
up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills." 

Each  night  I  was  anxious  to  hurry  into  bed,  for 
as  soon  as  the  lights  were  out  and  I  was  alone  was 
the  time  of  all  others  when  I  could  go  to  My  Coun 
try,  and  the  dark,  shutting  out  the  familiar  world, 
served  as  a  magic  curtain  on  which  to  throw  the 
shifting  scenes  of  my  dramas,  most  varied  and 
wonderful  dramas,  going  on,  continued  from  night 
to  night,  until  I  drifted  off  into  half  dreams,  when 
all  became  yet  more  vivid;  and  sometimes  I  had 
"My  Dream,"  as  I  called  it,  the  dream  I  have  had 
at  intervals  all  my  life,  and  went  to  The  Land  of 
Little  People — a  place  only  to  be  found  and  visited 
in  dreams.  I  still  go  there  occasionally,  when  I 
stumble  on  its  entrance,  a  huge  tin  kitchen  funnel 
hidden  behind  a  thicket  of  young  birch  trees  on 


MY  COUNTRY  81 

the  edge  of  the  Forest.     I  can  never  find  it  when  I , 
hunt;  it  can  only  be  found  by  accident. 

I  push  through  a  thicket  that  is  just  like  any 
other  thicket,  and  there  it  is,  a  shallow,  yawning 
trumpet  of  tin  painted  inside  with  alternate  rings 
of  green  and  pink.  I  step  inside,  and  as  I  go  toward 
the  neck  at  the  other  end,  far  off,  as  small  as  if 
seen  through  the  wrong  end  of  an  opera-glass,  I 
see  the  Land  bathed  in  sunlight,  with  strange  little 
people  walking  about,  their  shadows  around  their 
feet  like  neat,  dark  mats  spread  for  them  to  stand 
on,  giving  the  effect  of  tiny  statues  on  ebony 
stands,  foreshortened  as  they  would  seem  if  looked 
at  from  the  ceiling  of  a  room.  I  see  thoroughly 
only  the  tops  of  their  heads,  on  which  they  wear 
flat,  round  hats  like  the  ones  Chinese  coolies  wear 
at  work  in  the  rice-fields.  I  wonder  if  the  first 
suggestion  came  from  being  told  that  if  I  dug  a 
hole  in  the  ground,  straight  through  the  earth,  I 
would  come  out  at  China? 

Harry  and  I  once  spent  two  whole  days  digging 
a  hole  in  the  old  quarries  near  us.  We  selected  a 
place  where  a  rock  had  been  blasted  out,  so  there 
was  quite  a  deep  hole  to  start  with,  and  even  after 
two  whole  days  of  digging  China  still  seemed  a 
long  way  off.  So  I  asked  Papa  how  long  it  would 
take  us  to  get  through,  and  when  he  said  we  should  ' 

have  to  go  through  the  centre  of  the  earth  first,  x 


82  UNA  MARY 

where  everything  was  a  mass  of  molten  fire,  we  de 
cided  to  stop  digging  at  once  and  felt  we  had  had 
rather  a  narrow  escape,  for  the  very  next  lunge  of 
the  spade  might  have  broken  through  the  cool 
crust  and  let  the  melted  rock  boil  out  over  us. 

I  never  get  through  the  funnel  down  into  the 
Land  itself.  I  begin  to  slide  faster  and  faster  down 
the  smooth  tin  sides  toward  the  neck.  The  little 
people  look  up  and  see  me  coming,  which  makes 
them  at  once  tumble  off  their  shadows  and  lie 
about  like  a  spilled  box  of  tin  soldiers,  and  then 
with  ari  awful  jump  I  wake  up,  saying,  "Little  Peo 
ple,  keep  your  heads/'  which  wakes  me  thoroughly 
and  I  know  I  have  been  once  more  to  The  Land 
of  Little  People. 

Whenever  I  had  a  bad  day,  because  I  was  ill 
or^in  disgrace,  I  consoled  myself  with  the  thought 
that  it  did  not  really  matter  as  the  Una  in  the 
ordinary  world  was  not  the  real  Una  at  all,  that  I 
only  really  lived  as  Una  Mary,  in  My  Country,  so 
I  had  merely  to  endure  until  night,  when,  as  soon 
as  I  was  in  bed,  a  little  door  in  my  chest  seemed 
to  open  and  out  came  Una  Mary  and  my  real  life 
began. 

I  made  myself  a  gold  paper  crown  to  wear  in 
bed,  for  I  did  want  to  make  even  Una  look  wor 
thy  of  these  marvellous  night  adventures ;  but  the 
paper  tore  to  bits  before  morning,  so  in  its  place  I 


MY  COUNTRY  83 

painted  points  of  gold  on  a  black  ribbon,  the 
point  in  front  ending  in  a  star.  This  I  used  to 
wear  all  night,  tied  so  it  hid  my  two  tight  pigtails 
of  hair  that  were  fastened  with  dreadful  rub 
ber  bands. 

Una  Mary  always  came  very  quickly,  and  her 
adventures  were  especially  exciting  when  the  wind 
blew  at  night.  When  I  was  twelve  years  old  I 
wrote  this  poem  about  her: 

"The  far-off  wind  is  calling  me. 
Una  Mary,  shake  yourself  free, 
Tuck  up  your  skirts  and  run  away 
To  the  Land  where  the  story  people  play. 

"Call  to  Edward  to  come  with  you 
Where  clouds  are  floating  in  skies  of  blue, 
Where  clothes  are  made  of  velvet  and  gold, 
And  Knights  are  noble,  gentle,  and  bold. 

"We'll  run  away  from  the  outside  Me, 
And  from  the  Imp  be  wholly  free. 
My  flowing  hair  in  ringlets  dressed, 
We'll  only  do  what  we  like  best." 


\ 


CHAPTER  VI 
FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA 

TN  Harry's  house  there  was  an  attic  dimly 
•••  lighted  by  a  skylight  and  one  dormer-window 
where  on  rainy  days  we  were  allowed  to  play.  It 
had  dark  corners  for  hide-and-seek;  there  were  rob 
ber  dens  behind  trunks,  railway  trains  to  be  made 
from  the  chairs  banished  because  of  broken  cane 
seats,  and,  best  of  all,  clothes  for  dressing  up — 
whatever  we  did,  set  to  the  music  of  pattering  drops 
thudding  on  the  roof  and  splashing  on  the  skylight. 
To  this  day  rain  on  a  roof  directly  over  my  head 
has  a  dusty  smell  tinctured  with  the  leather  of  old 
trunks. 

In  one  of  these  trunks  we  found  some  maps  and 
a  Chart  of  the  Heavens  with  the  constellations 
drawn  out  as  elaborate  pictures  in  outline  on  a  pale- 
blue  ground.  We  called  it  The  Sky  Map  and  used 
to  pore  over  it  for  hours,  making  up  stories  about 
the  people  and  animals  with  the  strange,  long 
names.  In  answer  to  our  questions  about  them, 
Mamma  began  to  read  us  stories  from  Greek 

84 


FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA     85 

Mythology.  These  had  a  great  influence  upon  me 
religiously  and  gave  the  stars  a  most  dramatic  and 
personal  interest  added  to  their  firefly  sort  of 
beauty. 

I  had  rarely  seen  them,  the  real  stars,  as  I  went 
to  bed  before  they  were  fairly  out;  but  they  had 
flashed  at  me  through  the  blown  curtains  of  my 
room,  and  when  we  went  away  for  the  summer 
I  used  to  see  them  from  my  berth.  We  always 
took  a  night  train,  and  there  they  were,  travelling 
quietly  along  with  us  above  the  flying  country, 
serene  and  silent  spirits  robbing  night  of  all  its 
terrors — even  Death  must  shrink  back  abashed  un 
der  their  clear  gaze.  So  I  felt  Death  could  only 
catch  us  in  stuffy,  dark  rooms,  and  if  we  might  lie 
every  night  under  the  steadfast  stars  Death  would 
vanish  and  we  should  become  immortal  as  the 
Gods. 

There  was  one  especially  brilliant  star  that  shone 
above  the  railroad  station  as  the  train  pulled  out.  - 
It  was  the  first  star  I  ever  saw.    We  had  driven* 
down  to  the  station  and  gotten  on  board  the  train 
while  it  was  still  light.     I  recall  it  all  most  vividly, 
as  it  is  the  first  time  I  remember  travelling,  and 
when  I  was  put  to  bed  I  was  far  too  excited  by  the 
fascinations  of  my  berth,  with  its   curtains,  its  ' 
mirror,  and  the  little  hammock  for  my  clothes,  to 
think  of  going  to  sleep,  and  as  soon  as  the  train 


86  UNA  MARY 

started  I  peeped  behind  the  edge  of  the  curtain  at 
the  moving  station.  Then  when  we  got  outside 
I  saw  a  bright  light  in  the  sky.  At  first  I  thought 
it  was  a  lamp  on  a  tall  pole,  but  while  the  rest  of 
everywhere  was  rushing  from  me  this  light  stayed 
perfectly  still,  always  in  the  same  place,  directly 
opposite  my  window,  and  it  gave  me  such  a  queer 
feeling  to  see  it  there  that  I  called  to  Papa,  who 
had  explained  before  we  started  that  everything 
would  look  as  if  it  was  rushing  past  us,  and  asked 
him  what  he  thought  this  one  stationary  light 
could  be.  Was  it,  somehow,  part  of  our  train?  He 
told  me  it  was  a  star  and  that  the  sky  each  night 
was  full  of  many  stars  that  came  out  like  fairies 
after  it  was  dark,  and  soon  he  pointed  out  others. 
Faster  and  faster  they  came  until  the  whole  space 
of  blue-black  sky  opposite  my  window  sparkled 
with  them,  as  thick  as  the  spangles  on  Agnes's 
gauze  party  dress. 

But  of  all  those  I  could  see,  the  star  I  had  seen 
first  was  the  largest  and  brightest.  Papa  said 
the  stars  all  had  names  like  people  and  that  that 
star  was  called  Arcturus.  Each  year  as  the  train 
started  I  watched  for  it,  and  there  it  was,  above 
the  station.  I  took  it  for  Una  Mary's  star  and 
used  to  talk  and  really  pray  to  it,  though  I  did  not 
know  that  anything  except  "Now  I  lay  me"  could 
be  praying. 


FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA      87 

Arctunis  was  the  first  thing  I  consciously  wor 
shipped,  and  I  even  used  to  brave  the  fear  of  Death 
when  I  woke  up  at  night  and  crept  from  my  bed 
to  the  window,  managing,  however,  to  pull  down 
enough  slack  of  my  nightclothes  to  crawl  on  and 
so  keep  my  feet  covered.  Crouching  by  the  sill,  I 
would  find  the  unmistakable  group  of  stars  that 
made  the  Great  Dipper  and  then,  as  Papa  had 
shown  me,  trace  from  the  two  stars  at  the  end  of 
the  handle  to  the  largest  star  they  pointed  toward, 
Arcturus,  My  Star.  It  seemed  to  look  down  on 
earth  just  to  smile  at  me  and  listen  to  me  when  I 
talked  to  it. 

It  was  of  the  greatest  help  to  me  when  I  won 
dered  whether  or  not  I  was  real.  During  those 
strange  moments  when  I  felt  as  remote  from  the 
world  of  sense  as  if  I  were  a  ghost  looking  on  at 
the  life  of  earth  Arcturus  steadied  me.  I  was  sure 
the  stars  were  real,  and  with  that  fact  to  stand  on 
I  could  build  up  some  sort  of  solid  theory  of  exis 
tence.  What  sort  of  theory  I  never  found  out,  for 
the  feeling  of  unreality  passed  as  suddenly  as  it 
/  came  and  the  objects  around  me  became  so  con 
crete  and  tangible  that  I  knew  that  I  was  Una  in 
the  world  of  every  day. 

The  first  time  I  had  the  unreal  feeling  I  was 
playing  house  with  my  sister  under  the  dining- 
room  table  when  suddenly  I  gasped  as  I  wondered 


88  UNA  MARY 

which  of  us  was  real,  my  sister,  the  dining-room 
table,  or  I.  At  first  I  felt  sure  it  must  be  I,  and 
the  rest  of  the  world  with  all  the  things  and  peo 
ple  in  it  dreams  of  mine — dreams  of  Una  Mary's — 
and  then  came  the  horrible  thought  that  perhaps 
it  was  the  other  way  round :  perhaps  I  was  just  a 
dream  myself  while  all  the  rest  were  real.  Or  were 
we  all  only  dreams,  and,  if  so,  whose  dreams  were 
we?  For  there  must  be  some  one  real  somewhere 
to  dream  us  into  seeming,  just  as  Edward,  the 
Imp,  and  all  the  dramas  of  My  Country  were 
waking  dreams  of  mine. 

As  the  stars  were  the  only  things  I  was  sure 
about — I  knew  they  were  really  there  in  the  sky 
• — it  might  be  that  we  were  dreams  of  theirs,  and, 
if  so,  I  knew  I  was  a  dream  of  Arcturus.  This 
took  away  the  lost  feeling  that  had  been  the  horror 
of  thinking  I  might  not  be  real,  and  I  used  to 
pray  each  night  to  Arcturus  to  make  me  a  happy 
dream  and  make  my  life  what  I  would  make  it  if 
I  were  always  Una  Mary. 

To  carry  on  our  interest  in  Greek  Mythology 
after  we  had  been  told  the  stories  of  the  constel 
lations,  Mamma  that  winter  read  to  us  "  Haw 
thorne's  Wonder  Book,"  and  "The  Tanglewood 
Tales,"  supplemented  by  Bulfinch's  "Tales  from 
Mythology"  as  a  sort  of  "Who's  Who"  of  the 
Olympic  World.  Over  and  over  we  insisted  upon 


FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA      89 

having  them  read,  and  for  two  years  Harry  and  I 
revelled  in  an  atmosphere  of  Gods  and  Goddesses, 
and  all  the  games  we  played  together  were  made 
up  about  them.  It  was  Una  who  played  the 
Mythology  games  but  Una  Mary  to  whom  parts 
of  Mythology  became  religion. 

My  favorite  game  was  Europa  and  the  Bull. 
Of  course  it  could  only  be  played  in  summer,  and 
then  under  many  difficulties.  As  there  was  no 
bull,  a  reluctant  cow  had  to  take  his  place.  I 
used  to  make  long  wreaths  of  leaves  and  wild 
flowers  and  put  them  around  the  neck  of  the  cow 
I  had  selected  and  then  catch  her  by  the  tail, 
and  when  she  rushed  frantically  forward,  kicking 
and  plunging  to  shake  me  off,  on  I  hung,  dragged 
over  bushes  and  rocks,  bumping  about  like  a  tin 
can  tied  to  a  cat's  tail,  waiting  until  I  was  yanked 
up  to  some  really  good-sized  stone,  when,  using 
it  as  a  mounting-block,  I  would  give  a  wild  leap 
and  often  succeeded  in  swinging  myself  to  the 
back  of  the  astonished  and  outraged  cow,  and 
there  I  stuck,  lying  flat  on  my  face  and  holding  on 
by  her  horns  until  finally  sjg. '-managed  to  buck  me 
off  over  her  head.  The  bliss  of  those  mad  rushes 
about  the  fortunately  secluded  pasture,  my  face 
pressed  into  the  daisy  chains  around  the  poor 
beast's  neck,  the  wind  fairly  whistling  in  my  ears! 
The  smell  of  a  daisy  brings  it  all  back  to  this  day. 


go  UNA  MARY 

One  cow,  but  only  one,  succeeded  in  tossing  me 
on  her  horns,  and  then  it  was  only  a  mild  toss; 
but  often  the  greatest  excitement  of  all  came  after 
I  had  been  thrown  off  and  had  to  roll  as  fast  as 
I  could  behind  rocks  or  trees  to  escape  being  gored 
or  trampled  in  the  stampede  of  the  whole  frantic 
herd.  Being  Europa  was  really  magnificent! 

Once  I  tried  driving  a  chariot  in  the  pasture 
instead.  I  was  the  chariot  with  a  pair  of  calves 
for  my  galloping  steeds.  They  were  fair-sized 
ones  and  pulled  so  hard  I  was  afraid  they  would 
get  away,  so  I  tied  the  ends  of  their  ropes  around 
my  waist,  and  then,  as  the  calves  suddenly  dashed 
off  in  opposite  directions,  I  flew  about  like  a  jump- 
ing-jack  and  was  only  rescued  by  a  convulsed  hired 
man  when  I  was  almost  cut  in  two.  I  never  played 
chariots  again.  I  could  cope  with  cows,  but  for 
calves  I  had  a  wholesome  respect. 

Harry  was  crazy  to  fly.  He  had  always  wanted 
to  and  often  had  flying  dreams  at  night,  and  when 
he  heard  the  story  of  Icarus  he  was  fired  with  the 
ambition  to  really  try.  We  made  a  pair  of  wings 
as  tall  as  he  was,  cut  out  of  cardboard,  fastened 
together  with  glue,  so  overcoming  the  weakness  in 
the  ones  Icarus  had  used,  for  glue  could  not  melt 
in  the  sun  as  his  wax  had  done,  and  there  seemed 
nothing  to  prevent  the  flight  from  being  a  great 
success;  but,  to  be  absolutely  on  the  safe  side,  we 


FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA     91 

waited  for  a  cloudy  day — not  raining,  that  would 
have  melted  the  glue,  just  overcast.  I  tied  the 
wings  securely  to  each  of  Harry's  arms.  Then  he 
climbed  on  to  the  sill  of  a  second-story  window  and 
jumped  out  with  his  arms  spread  as  if  he  were 
swimming.  But,  to  my  horror,  instead  of  floating 
in  the  air,  soaring  gradually  up  over  the  housetops, 
straight  as  a  stone  he  fell — crash ! — through  a  grape 
arbor  to  the  ground  below,  where  he  lay,  fortu 
nately  unhurt,  but  crying  bitterly  for  his  lost  illu 
sions. 

It  was  a  long  time  before  he  cared  for  Mythology 
games  after  that — he  said,  "They  just  take  a  fel 
low  in" — but  his  faith  was  a  little  revived  by  find 
ing  that  the  story  of  Clytie  was  true.  It  had  fas 
cinated  us  botanically,  this  story  of  a  lady  who  was 
so  in  love  with  Apollo  that  she  turned  her  head 
all  day  long  in  order  to  watch  him  when  he  drove 
the  chariot  of  the  sun  until  she  pined  away  with 
love  and  longing  and  was  changed  to  a  sunflower, 
and  still,  so  the  story  said,  turned  each  day  to  face 
the  sun.  To  test  the  story  we  went  to  spend  the 
day  with  Lizzie,  who  was  now  married  and,  we 
knew,  had  sunflowers  in  her  yard.  We  picked  out 
the  largest  one  as  most  likely  to  be  Clytie,  and  all 
day  long,  between  games,  we  watched  her,  measur 
ing  her  course  by  holding  up  a  pencil  as  my  grand 
mother  did  when  she  sketched,  and  by  afternoon 


v. 


92  UNA  MARY 

she  had  turned  completely  round.  So  that  story, 
at  any  rate,  was  true. 

It  was  a  wonderful  thing  to  live  for  two  years 
with  and  as  those  radiant  Olympic  Beings.  We 
talked  about  them  continually  to  our  families  and 
to  Agnes.  The  other  children  were  bored  by  them 
and  preferred  to  play  as  moderns.  Agnes  was  a 
great  help  as  she  was  wonderful  at  draping  tunics 
of  towels  and  sheets  and  could  make  laurel  wreaths 
out  of  maple  leaves  fastened  together  by  their  own 
stems,  and  Papa  each  spring  made  us  Pan's  Pipes 
from  willow  twigs. 

One  side  of  Mythology  I  never  talked  about, 
however,  even  to  Harry  or  Agnes,  because  it  be 
longed  wholly  to  Una  Mary.  She  had  appropri 
ated  it  in  the  very  beginning.  That  was  the  re 
ligious  side,  and  it  became  part  of  the  very  fibre  of 
my  inner  life,  more  precious  even  than  Edward  or 
My  Country,  and  the  thing  my  Imp  hated  most. 
He  particularly  objected  to  all  my  religions. 

When  I  heard  of  Sacred  Trees  inhabited  by 
Immortals,  who  were  their  inner  spirits,  I  knew  at 
once  that  the  great  apple-tree  in  our  yard,  gnarled, 
knotted,  and  too  old  to  bear  fruit,  with  broad, 
mothering  seats  next  its  trunk,  must  be  one  of 
these  sacred  and  spirit-haunted  trees.  Its  bark, 
when  I  rested  my  cheek  against  it,  had  almost  told 
me  secrets,  and  I  knew  that  it  loved  me.  I  knew  we 


FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA  93 

understood  each  other.  Una  Mary  and  its  spirit 
were  akin.  So  I  transferred  my  worship  from  Aro 
turus  to  the  apple-tree,  quite  as  wonderful  and 
magical-looking  as  if  it  had  been  an  olive  or  an 
ilex  tree.  It  seemed  much  nearer  and  more  inti 
mate  than  the  stars,  which  now  began  to  lose  their 
individuality,  for  my  new  knowledge  of  the  move 
ment  of  the  earth  had  robbed  the  stars  of  personal 
being.  If  they  were  not  hovering  and  circling 
around  us,  trying  to  reach  us  with  their  love  and 
sympathy  but  were  merely  motionless,  far-off  suns 
for  other  worlds,  how  could  they  be  beings  worthy 
of  my  worship  and  my  love?  Even  Arcturus 
could  be  no  longer  a  Celestial  Person.  I  thought 
of  them  as  holes  instead,  pricked  through  the  blue 
cover  of  this  world,  letting  in  the  light  of  the  world 
beyond,  air-holes  for  the  earth  letting  the  wind 
from  far  away  blow  through,  and  peep-holes  for 
the  all-seeing  Gods. 

It  was  wonderful  to  be  able  to  touch  my  Sacred 
Tree  and  whisper,  as  it  were,  into  its  very  ear 
through  a  huge  knot-hole  hollowed  far  into  the 
heart  of  the  tree.  It  was  at  this  same  hole  that  I 
used  to  listen  for  messages  and  omens,  but  all  I 
ever  heard  was  the  rustling  of  the  branches,  mur 
muring  with  half-articulate  tongues  sounds  I  al 
most  understood. 

It  was  the  year  of  the  Great  Comet,  and  one  day 


94  UNA  MARY 

Harry  was  allowed  to  spend  the  night  at  our  house 
in  order  to  get  up  at  midnight  and  see  it.  After  we 
had  been  asleep  for  hours  Mamma  wakened  us  and, 
wrapped  in  shawls,  we  stood  on  the  balcony,  and 
there  arching  the  whole  sky,  as  large  as  the  Milky 
Way,  as  I  remember  it,  was  the  tail  of  the  comet 
spreading  like  the  feathers  of  a  peacock  from  the 
star  at  its  head.  I  always  think  of  it  as  a  fiery 
peacock  with  closed  tail  trailing  across  the  sky. 
It  gave  so  much  light  that  I  could  see  My  Tree 
distinctly  at  the  far  end  of  the  yard,  and  the  comet 
was  arched  directly  above  it  as  if  the  whole  sky 
had  become  a  halo,  so  transfiguring  it  that  the 
Tree  seemed  to  rise  a  few  feet  into  the  air.  The 

/  whole  experience  was  stupendous,  as  real  and  deep 

,         to  me  as  any  vision  of  the  Saints.     It  proved  that 

Una  Mary  had  been  right.     My  Tree  was  of  the 

sacred  ones.     The  whole  sky  proclaimed  it  with 

- —  trumpetings  of  light  and  flame. 

The  next  morning  I  went,  as  I  did  each  day 

while  my  garden  was  in  bloom,  to  lay  flowers  at 

the  foot  of  My  Tree.     They  were  morning-glories, 

^  magical  four-o'clocks,  and  a  yellow-flowered  vine 

/       named  money,  but  which  I  called  Midas-touch 

instead,  and  lying  on  the  grass  under  the  Tree  I 

found  a  bunch  of  fine-spun  gold.     That  it  should 

have  blown  there  on  that  particular  morning  was 

/   one   of   those   positively   unearthly   coincidences. 


\ 

FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA     95 

But  there  it  was,  a  tangle  of  gleaming  golden 
threads  vibrating  with  light  as  it  lay  on  the  dark- 
green  moss,  and  I  grew  cold  with  excitement  as  I 
realized  that  the  Comet  had  dropped  a  piece  of  its 
tail  at  the  foot  of  My  Tree,  a  great  miracle  and 
sign  of  endless  portent.  I  felt  myself  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  Gods  in  very  deed.  I  did  not  dare 
touch  the  shining  thing  for  fear  it  would  vanish 
like  the  dewdrops  on  a  cobweb,  so  I  rushed 
into  the  house  and  called  the  family  to  come  and 
see! 

I  have  never  gotten  over  the  agony  of  disap 
pointment  that  crushed  me  as  they  all  burst  out 
laughing  when  I  showed  it  to  them,  saying  it  was 
a  piece  of  the  Comet's  tail,  and  as  they  laughed 
they  told  me  it  was  only  a  bit  of  tinsel  from  some 
old  Christmas  tree.  My  disappointment  was  not 
because  it  was  not  part  of  the  Comet — that  belief 
was  unshaken;  I  knew  I  was  right — but  because 
they  could  not  see  it  as  I  did  and  understand.  It 
seemed  a  reversal  of  the  story  of  "The  Emperor's 
Clothes."  To  them  it  was  only  tinsel,  but  I  saw 
it  as  it  really  was — the  texture  of  light  and  the 
sky  itself.  My  faith  triumphed  over  all  the  facts 
they  tried  to  prove  to  me.  Even  when  they  showed 
me  a  piece  of  tinsel  from  our  own  box  of  Christmas 
decorations  and  I  saw  that  the  two  were  exactly 
alike,  my  senses  only  admitted  it:  ^  My  soul  still 


96  UNA  MARY 

knew  the  Comet  had  sent  me  a  sign  and  a  message 
and  had  blessed  My  Tree. 

Perhaps  it  had  power  to  do  so  only  with  earthly 
tinsel,  and  perhaps  all  tinsel  came  from  comets  in 
the  beginning.  I  had  seen  meteorites  and  knew 
they  were  fallen  fragments  of  stars,  certainly  much 
transformed  when  they  reached  the  earth.  My 
father  had  told  me  the  Comet's  tail  was  made  of 
light,  but  so  was  a  star;  so  possibly  a  comet  could 
become  solid  and  fall  to  the  ground  without  losing 
any  of  its  light  and  loveliness,  could  drift  down  as 
softly  as  a  snowflake  in  wisps  of  filmy  gold. 

After  the  family  had  gone  into  the  house,  still 
laughing,  I  took  the  celestial  piece  of  tinsel,  put  it 
in  a  box  that  I  had  lined  with  lace  paper  from  the 
edge  of  the  pantry  shelves,  and  buried  it  at  the  foot 
of  the  Sacred  Tree,  a  miraculous  relic,  and  on  the 
ground  above  it  I  always  afterward  laid  my  offering 
of  flowers.  Surely  those  threads  of  gold  held  a 
message  for  Una  Mary,  and  she  showed  her  deeper 
insight  by  clinging  to  the  awe  that  had  gripped  her 
soul. 

/   After  a  time  the  Tree-worship  failed  to  satisfy 
me.     I  needed  something  even  more  personal,  more 
human.     The  spirit  within  the  Tree  was  too  re 
mote,  too  cautious  about  revealing  himself.     After 
•4  watching  for  a  year  I  had  never  caught  a  glimpse 

\of  him  and  he  had  not  once  spoken  a  single  word 

'  \ 


FROM  ARCTURUS  TO  MINERVA  97 

that  I  could  understand.  I  did  not  lose  faith  in  his 
being  there.  How  could  I  when  the  whole  flaming 
sky  had  confirmed  the  instinct  that  had  led  Una 
Mary  to  his  worship?  ^What  I  really Jost  faith  in 
was  myself.  He  could  not  reveal  himself  to  me, 
because,  evidently,  I  lacked  the  power  to  hear 
oracles. 

The  Greek  stories  with  their  immortal  Gods  and 
Goddesses  were  a  great  consolation  to  me,  for  these 
gay  and  genial,  though  at  times  hasty- tempered, 
beings  were  of  the  sort  that  I  could  understand. 
They  were  naturally  of  Una  Mary's  world,  and  as 
they  sometimes  conferred  immortality  on  the  hu 
man  worshippers  who  won  their  favor,  who  could 
tell,  if  I  devoted  myself  wholly  to  one  of  them, 
whether  Una  Mary  might  not  become  immortal? 
Not  Una,  I  preferred  to  have  her  die;  but  as  Una 
Mary  I  should  love  to  live  forever  on  Olympus, 
or,  if  not  worthy  of  such  a  high  destiny,  to  be 
turned  into  a  flower  or  a  star  was  almost  all  that 
one  could  wish. 

How  I  loved  the  narcissus !  and  when  we  had  one 
growing  in  a  flower-pot  I  used  to  hold  a  hand  mirror 
so  that  he  could  look  down  and  still  see  his  loveli 
ness  reflected  and  fall  in  love  with  his  own  image 
all  over  again  as  he  had  done  when  he  gazed  in  the 
fatal  spring.  To  become  a  flower,  even  if  one  were 
turned  into  it  as  a  punishment,  was  much  better 


g8  UNA  MARY 

than  believing  one's  bones  skinned  out  by  Death. 
So  Death  retreated  into  the  far  distance  and  even 
the  shadows  on  the  ceiling  lost  theif  terrors.  God 
I  still  accepted,  but  as  I  now  thought  of  Him  He 
was  not  concerned  with  the  fate  of  men.  All  that 
had  to  do  with  us  He  had  turned  over  to  the  Gods. 
He  was  the  first  cause,  the  far-off  Being  who  had 
made  the  Gods. 

In  the  hope  of  winning  immortality  for  Una 
Mary  I  decided  to  worship  Minerva.  She  has 
since  seemed  so  austere  and  forbidding  that  I  am 
surprised  I  picked  her  out.  Venus  was  out  of  the 
question  because  she  had  no  arms  (there  was  a 
statue  of  her  on  the  mantelpiece  in  Mamma's 
room),  but  either  Juno  Dr  Diana  would  have  seemed 
a  more  natural  choice.  I  I  think  -sfre  was  dear  to  me 
because  of  her  masculine  traits,  as  I  felt  I  myself 
— that  is,  Una — was  a  boy-girl,  so  she,  the  man- 
woman,  was  appropriately  my  chosen  GoddessJ  I 
may  also  have  been  influenced  by  my  silver  knife, 
fork,  and  spoon,  my  own,  the  ones  I  always  used, 
given  to  me  when  I  was  a  baby,  with  handles  that 
ended  in  medallions  that  were  decorated  with  heads 
of  Minerva;  and  our  pepper-pots  were  made  in  the 
shape  of  her  owls,  making  meals,  when  I  remem 
bered  to  think  about  it,  rather  sacramental  affairs. 

I  built  an  altar  to  her  in  the  far  cprner  of  the 
back  yard  where  the  fence  touched  an  adjoining 


FROM  ARCTURUS   TO  MINERVA      99 

house.  Between  ceremonies  I  carefully  concealed 
it  under  sticks  and  leaves,  though  it  would  have 
conveyed  nothing  even  to  the  most  curious  if  left 
in  full  view,  as  outwardly  it  was  merely  a  pile  of 
scraps  of  broken  china  and  glass,  the  most  gayly 
colored  I  could  find.  /  I  deliberately  broke  a  red 
vase  of  Mamma's  to  get  the  pieces  from  the  ash 
barrel,  as  red  was  the  color  my  altar  lacked. 

On  top  of  this  pile  during  ceremonies  I  used  to 
put  a  real  quartz  crystal  I  had  begged  from  Papa 
and  always  carried  about  between  times  in  my 
pocket.  It  was  one  of  those  crystals,  perfect  on 
all  sides,  that  are  found  loose  inside  of  geodes. 

The  whole  service  to  Minerva  consisted,  after  I 
had  arranged  the  crystal  on  the  altar,  in  lying  flat 
on  my  stomach  on  the  grass  in  front  of  it,  watch 
ing  the  light  shine  through  the  various  angles  and 
planes  of  the  crystal.  In  their  perfect  precision 
and  the  cold  clearness  of  the  quartz  I  felt  the  per 
sonality  of  Minerva  and  seemed  to  be  almost  in 
her  presence.  Una  Mary  always  had  a  sure  in 
stinct  for  resemblances  in  the  selection  of  her  sym 
bols. 

Whenever  I  had  any  candy — we  were  only  al 
lowed  crystal  of  sugar  on  a  string  or  colt's-foot 
rock,  provided  on  the/  slightest  suspicion  of  a  cold^ 
by  Harry's  grandmother — I  always  saved  a  piece 
to  put  on  the  altar,  and  there  I  religiously  left  it 


ioo  UNA  MARY 

to  be  melted  away  by  the  rain.  Once  and  once 
only  I  succumbed  to  temptation  and  took  a  suck, 
licking  it  smooth  again  so  Minerva  would  never 
know;  but  my  conscience  never  let  me  do  it  again 
,  and  my  Imp,  who  seemed  intimately  related  to  my 
conscience  never  allowed  me  to  forget  about  it. 

I  really  loved  Minerva,  symbolized  in  the  crystal, 
and  used  to  pour  out  all  of  my  troubles  before  her; 
above  all,  my  grief  at  not  looking  and  seeming 
Una  Mary  to  all  the  world.  That  most  secret 
grief  I  felt  she  could  understand.  Minerva  her 
self  must  have  often  had  the  same  feeling — my 
dreadful  party  feeling — when  she  moved  among  the 
other  Goddesses  on  Olympus. 

During  the  firefly  season  my  religious  parapher-  \ 
nalia  was  greatly  enriched  by  small  paper  boxes, 
the  only  thing  I  had  learned  to  make  at  kinder 
garten,  in  which  I  put  live  fireflies  and  ranged  them 
in  front  of  the  altar,  that  with  their  light  they  might 
serve  as  Vestal  Virgins.  There  was  a  large  and  V 
serious  toad  who  used  to  come  out  in  the  spring 
and  often  join  me  at  the  services.  I  had  a  great 
respect  for  him  and  felt  he  must  be  deeply  religious, 
though  since  then  I  have  suspected  him  of  designs 
upon  the  Vestal  Virgins,  who  used  mysteriously  to 
disappear. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  UNKNOWN  POWER 

ROM  some  old  quarries  near  us,  the  quarries 
where  Harry  and  I  had  tried  to  dig  through 
to  China,  one  could  look  over  the  city  below  and 
across  the  Ohio  River  to  Kentucky,  rolling  off  in 
blue  undulations  to  the  horizon.  This  blue  haze 
of  distance  was  to  me  the  blue-grass  from  which 
the  State  got  its  name,  almost  as  blue  as  the  sky, 
only  darker,  it  seemed. 

I  loved  the  thought  that  I  could  see  another 
State,  and  once  when  Harry  and  I  were  taken 
across  the  river  and  actually  set  foot  on  its  soil,  I 
felt  I  had  really  travelled,  much  more  so  than  when 
we  went  East  for  the  summer.  The  two  nights 
and  a  day  that  it  then  took  to  reach  Boston  by 
train  blurred  the  impression  of  change  of  State, 
while  here  it  was  immediate — just  driving  in  a 
carriage  like  any  other  drive — yet  we  had  come  to 
a  new  State  with  a  different  Governor. 

Governors  and  politics  in  general  were  of  real 
importance  to  me,  because  of  the  interest  taken  in 
them  by  Pat,  my  coachman  friend.  I  used  to  sit 

101 


102  -  -UNA  MARY 

on  a  bucket  and  watch  him,  in  high  rubber  boots 
up  to  his  hips,  as  he  washed  carriages  with  a  hose. 
I  admired  him  greatly,  though  at  the  same  time  I 
was  sorry  he  had  to  wash  carriages  for  the  Browns 
without  the  final  e.  We  had  some  cousins  who  had 
the  e,  so  I  knew  how  important  it  was.  As  he 
worked  he  regaled  me  with  his  political  views. 

Pat  was  a  Democrat,  I  think.  I  remember  he 
convinced  me,  as  he  gesticulated  with  his  hose,  that 
"Grover  Cleveland  wuz  the  finest  man  this  coun 
try  iver  produced."  He  gave  me,  too,  a  great  deal 
of  the  history  of  politics,  so  full  of  details  that  the 
names  of  the  various  parties  and  men  were  jumbled 
in  my  mind  with  sayings  about  "Tippecanoe  and 
Tyler  too,"  and  log  cabins  on  wheels  that  were 
dragged  in  the  torchlight  processions  because  the 
backbone  of  the  country  and  most  of  the  Presi 
dents' were  born  in  log  cabins.  I  felt  keenly  the 
fact  that  Papa  had  been  born  in  a  brick  house  and 
so  was  barred  forever  from  becoming  President. 

The  last  year  I  knew  Pat,  the  ominous  word 
" Mugwumps"  had  begun  to  be  used.  He  liked 
it,  but  often  other  men  growled  it  out  in  such  a 
venomous  way  that  I  got  the  impression  that  it 
must  be  some  sort  of  snake  that  stung  people  and 
changed  them  completely,  so  my  horror  was  great 
when  I  heard  that  Papa,  after  "sitting  on  the 
fence,"  had  become  one.  But  it  did  not  change 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  103 

him  at  all,  which  cheered  me  so  that  I  began  to 
wonder  if  my  other  terror  could  be  as  bad  as  I  had 
thought.  I  hoped  not,  for  it  was  one  of  Una  Mary's 
horrors  at  night — the  Ku-Klux-Klan.  You  just 
whispered  the  word  to  yourself  and  shuddered.  I 
could  always  make  Harry  turn  pale  by  murmuring 
it  into  his  ears.  Pat  described  them  fully,  white- 
masked  Riders  who  rode  at  night  and  killed  people 
or  tied  them  to  trees  and  beat  them,  and  the  police 
thought  they  were  all  in  prison  and  so  did  nothing 
about  catching  them.  White  Caps  was  another 
name  for  them,  but  that  sounded  too  cheerful. 
Ku-Klux-Klan  was  the  word  that  expressed  them. 
Ku-Klux  sounded  so  like  some  awful  stealthy  thing 
coming  up  behind  you,  and  then  at  the  Klan  it 
clutched,  and  if  you  happened  to  be  Harry  when 
I  said  the  word  to  him,  by  the  time  I  reached  Klan 
you  had  ducked  under  the  bed. 

The  most  important  thing  in  Politics  as  I  im 
bibed  it  from  Pat  seemed  to  be  roosters.  People 
wore  them  as  badges,  and  Pat  himself  even  had 
a  whole  stuffed  one  that  he  had  worn  perched  on 
top  of  his  hat  when  he  drove  the  horses  that 
dragged  the  log  cabin  in  the  torchlight  procession. 
I  was  sure  the  Governor  and  President  in  some  way 
needed  the  help  of  roosters  in  governing,  and  I  al 
ways  thought  of  them  with  crowing  cocks  perched 
on  the  arms  of  their  official  chairs. 


io4  UNA  MARY 

On  the  eventful  day  when  we  went  to  Ken 
tucky  I  found  in  the  garden  of  the  house  where  we 
lunched  a  queer,  lumpy,  crimson  flower  that  I  had 
never  seen  before,  and  when  I  heard  its  name,  cocks 
comb,  I  was  convinced  it  must  later  grow  out  a 
whole  rooster,  like  the  Mythology  story  of  the  war 
riors  who  sprang  up  in  the  field  where  the  dragon's 
teeth  were  sown,  coming  out  of  the  ground  head 
first,  a  little  at  a  time.  This  plant,  when  I  saw  it, 
had  only  gotten  as  far  as  the  comb.  My  theories 
of  birth  were  a  little  upset  by  it,  as  I  wondered  if 
there  were  human  plants,  too;  but  on  the  whole  I 
decided  in  favor  of  the  egg  theory,  as  the  stems  of 
plants  seemed  too  weak  even  to  hold  up  a  puppy. 
I  watched  the  rooster  plant  for  some  time  in  the 
Jiope  jthat  at  least  an  eye  might  grow  out  while  I 
watched,  but  it  grew  too  slowly  and  looked  exactly 
the  same  all  the  time  I  was  there.  I  studied  it 
with  great  reverence  as  the  parent  of  all  true  Poli- 
tics  and  the  associate  of  future  Presidents.  When 
Ptold  Pat  about  it  next  day  he  said:  "Shure  and  ye  i 

(  ought  to  be  a  blissed  Catholic  with  the  sinse  yeVe  ' 

vgot  fur  miracles." 

x  My  only  disappointment  about  Kentucky  came 
in  finding  that  the  grass  instead  of  being  blue  was 
most  aggressively  green,  though  I  found  a  small  blue 
flower  that  Mamma  said  was  blue-eyed  grass.  So  I 
hoped  it,  at  any  rate,  carpeted  the  rest  of  the  State. 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  105 

It  was  a  wonderful  day  of  many  experiences. 
The  friends  we  were  with  had,  before  the  Civil 
War,  been  part  of  the  "  Underground  Railway," 
which  I  had  supposed  to  be  a  good  deal  like  the 
Hoosac  Tunnel.  So  it  was  surprising  to  find  it 
was  made  up  of  people,  and  as  they  told  my  mother 
about  smuggling  slaves  to  the  North  and  the  nar 
row  escapes  some  of  them  had  had  and  the  hatred 
they  had  brought  upon  themselves  in  a  slave-  ^_ 
owning  community,  I,  listening  unnoticed  but 
breathless,  suddenly  had  a  glimmering  of  how 
much  people,  real  people  who  were  not  book  people 
at  all,  might  be  willing  to  do  and  risk  for  others, 
even  for  people  they  had  never  seen;  and  the 
wrongs  and  needs  of  the  blacks  became  so  vivid  / 
to  me  that  the  next  day  I  presented  a  bird-shaped 
whistle,  one  of  my  treasures,  to  the  janitor  of  a 
church  near  us,  the  only  colored  person  I  had  ever 
seen.  He  was  greatly  pleased  and  said  he  would 
give  it  to  his  little  boy.  But  I  was  much  disap- v 
pointed,  feeling  that  would  frustrate  my  object,^ 
and  urged  him  to  keep  it  for  himself,  as  it  never 
occurred  to  me  that  his  little  boy  could  be  black 
also. 

The  house  where  these  Kentucky  friends  had  . 
lived  during  the  war  was  burned  to  the  ground  by 
a  guerilla  band  as  a  reprisal  on  the  part  of  their 
Confederate  neighbors,  and  the  family  themselves 


io6  UNA  MARY 

had  barely  escaped  with  their  lives.  All  their  sil 
ver,  which  I  later  inspected  with  great  awe,  was 
buried  in  the  woods  for  months  before  they  dared 
to  go  back  and  get  it. 

Their  stories  made  Harry  rush  out-of-doors  and 
play  war  by  chopping  off  the  heads  of  daisies  with 
a  stick,  yelling  at  each  stroke,  "Curse  ye  for 
Yanks,"  as  the  Rebels  had  shouted  when  they 
burned  down  the  house.  I  did  not  care  to  play 
.with  him,  for  the  fierce  and  relentless  side  of  war 
had  been  brought  home  to  me  even  more  vividly 
than  by  handling  the  sword  Harry's  father  had 
used  during  the  war,  a  sword  that  had  really  cut 
people  and  dripped  blood  as  he  slashed  at  the 
enemy  from  horseback.  He  had  been  a  captain 
of  cavalry.  Over  the  mantelpiece  in  their  dining- 
room  there  was  a  large  painting  of  him,  in  uniform, 
charging  the  enemy.  Harry  was  consequently  our 
authority  on  war,  but  as  he  talked  about  it,  it  had 
never  seemed  terrible. 

Now  I  longed  to  hear  more  and  used  to  question 

every  man  who  was  older  than  my  father,  for 

Papa  I  knew  had  been  too  young  to  enlist,  and  I 

found  that  nearly  every  one  we  knew  had  either 

1  fought  himself  or  had  stories  about  relatives  who 

had.     It  became  the  most  absorbing  subject  to  me, 

and  I  perfectly  understood  their  reticence  and  the 

'"bald,  abrupt  way  in  which  they  so  often  spoke  of 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  107 

battles,  escapes,  and  the  wounds  they  had  received. 
It  was  just  like  not  making  a  fuss  over  a  cut  finger. 
Our  doctor  had  only  one  leg,  and  when  I  asked  him 
about  it,  his  answer,  "I  left  that  foot  at  Gettys 
burg,"  thrilled  me  more  than  the  most  detailed 
account. 

I  was  troubled  when  I  thought  of  all  the  stray 
arms  and  legs  on  different  battle-fields,  and  hoped 
Death  knew  them  apart  so  that  when  the  skeletons 
were  put  together  people  would  get  the  souls  of 
their  own  arms  and  legs.     It  would  be  so  horrible 
if  they  got  mixed  arid  a  person  wore  part  of  some 
one  else!     I  wondered,  too,  if  the  outsides  of  the 
arms  and  legs  became  little,  separate  angels.     I 
knew  Cherubs  were  just  detached  heads  with  wings, 
so  now  I  had  a  most  vivid  picture  before  my  mind  w 
of  a  battle-field  at  dusk — I  had  seen  one,  just  a 
common,  grassy  pasture — with   hundreds  of  de 
tached  limbs  sailing  off  to  the  sky,  each  with  its\ 
own  pair  of  wings,  while  Death  wandered  about  be-  J 
low  tying  paper  tags  with  the  names  onto  all  ther  K 
bones  that  were  left  before  sticking  them  into  the    j 
ground.     When  the  rest  of  the  man  died,  I  won-    [ 
dered  if  Death  put  his  skeleton  in  a  grave  on  the    / 
battle-field  or  went  and  dug  up  the  part  that  waS 
there  and  buried  it  in  the  cemetery  with  the  rest 
of  the  body.     Fortunately,  I  had  never  heard  of 
a  Day  of  Judgment  to  complicate  my  difficulties.    \ 


io8      ^  UNA  MARY 

That  people  were  actually  killed  in  battle  I  did 
not  know.  No  one  happened  to  mention  that  part 
to  me.  I  thought  from  the  stories  I  heard  that 
they  were  often  wounded  and  barely  escaped  with 
their  lives,  but  they  always  did  escape  and  often 
they  were  incredibly  brave. 

Pat  had  been  a  drummer  for  his  regiment.  He 
often  played  to  us  after  work  with  a  pair  of  sticks 
on  a  turned-up  bucket.  We  thought  it  was  won 
derful  music.  He  had  no  hesitation  about  telling 
us  all  the  details  of  how  superbly  he  had  behaved 
and  what  he  had  accomplished  single-handed.  H$ 
often  seemed  to  have  been  alone  in  the  forefront 
of  battle  surrounded  by  the  enemy  whom  he  kept 
„  off  with  a  pistol  in  one  hand  and  a  drumstick  in  the 
other  until  he  managed  to  wrench  a  sword  or  a  gun 
from  one  of  the  gray  coats.  And  once  he  knocked 
down  three  men  by  butting  into  them  with  his 
drum!  Harry  tried  it  on  me  and  it  knocked  out 
my  wind  completely.  It  was  clever  of  Pat  to 
think  of  it  in  the  thick  of  battle! 

That  was  the  one  of  all  his  adventures  that  we 
liked  best,  but  he  did  not  in  the  end  get  off  scot- 
free.  Even  the  marvellous  Pat  with  all  his  skill 
had  lost  one  finger  in  battle  and  had  a  mysterious 
stitch  in  his  side  as  the  result  of  another.  Harry 
had  seen  it  once.  Pat  showed  it  to  him  as  a  great 
favor. 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  109 

Now  for  the  first  time  the  human  drama,  as 
something  real  and  existing  outside  of  books  or  the 
imagination,  became  vivid  and  absorbing  to  me. 
Una  Mary  could  do  all  sorts  of  magnificent  things 
that  Una  was  afraid  to  do,  but  that  real,  living  men 
actually  did  those  things  positively  awed  me,  and 
their  courage  made  me  thrill  as  books  never  had, 
and  it  made  me  shudder,  too,  reminding  me  of  the 
gas  tanks  against  the  blue  sky.  There  was  the 
same  element  here  in  human  life,  the  same  splen 
did,  immeasurable  terror  which  I  could  not  under 
stand. 

That  same  year  several  things  happened  to 
deepen  this  impression  of  a  dangerous,  unknown 
Power  woven  through  and  yet  outside  of  all  our 
lives. 

The  first  was  a  riot  down  in  the  city.  Of  course 
I  only  heard  about  it,  but  people  talked  of  nothing 
else  for  days.  As  I  remember,  the  troops  were 
called  out,  and  during  the  fight  several  people  were 
killed.  I  had  seen  a  hawk  shot,  had  heard  the 
crack  of  the  gun,  seen  the  bird  waver  an  instant 
in  the  air,  then  fall  flopping  and  whirling  to  the 
ground,  where  I  picked  him  up,  a  warm,  limp  mass 
of  feathers  that  seemed  tragically  remote  from 
the  creature  proudly  soaring  in  the  air  a  moment 
before.  And  now  men  had  been  shot  down  near 
us!  The  thought  haunted  me  for  weeks,  and  each 


no  UNA  MARY 

day  when  my  father  went  to  the  laboratory  I  was 
afraid  he,  too,  might  be  shot.  The  University  was 
on  the  side  of  the  hill  half-way  down  to  the  city, 
where  it  could  be  reached  by  a  cable  inclined  plane 
known  as  the  "  Ink-line,"  and  I  imagined  all  the 
rioters  in  the  city  shooting  up  at  the  descending 
'cars.  It  was  horrible!  It  was  even  worse  than 
the  snatching  of  Death  himself,  this  killing  of 
human  beings  by  other  human  beings.  It  was  as 
monstrous  as  an  old  sow  eating  her  suckling,  an 
event, that  had  shocked  me  inexpressibly  at.  the 
farm  the  summer  before. 

The  next  terror  was  a  smallpox  epidemic.  I  re 
member  seeing  the  signs  outside  many  houses  and 
on  Mount  Auburn  Avenue,  the  street  that  joined 
ours  at  right  angles,  there  was  an  almost  continuous 
procession  of  funerals  all  day  long  to  the  cemetery 
in  the  country  beyond.  I  am  sure  now  that  the 
smallpox  could  not  have  been  responsible  for  them, 
but  I  thought  so  then,  and  used  to  watch  them  with 
a  grewsome  fascination  and  count  the  hearses  I 

^  could  see  from  the  bay  window  in  the  parlor.  It 
was  the  day  of  hearses  splendid  with  carving,  metal 
trimmings,  and  black  plumes,  and  the  horses  had 
more  plumes  on  their  heads  and  coverings  of  tas- 
,,  selled  net  on  their  backs.  Una  Mary  felt  they 
Were  magnificent  and  I  turned  a  toy  wagon  into  a 

?.  hearse  drawn  by  a  rocking-horse  covered  with  an 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  in 

old  dotted  veil  of  Mamma's  and  had  iunerals  ev 
ery  day  for  my  dolls,  with  old  calling  cards  stand 
ing  up  against  blocks  for  their  gravestones. 

I  secretly  felt  that  our  house  lacked  dignity 
because  we  had  never  had  a  real  funeral  in  it. 
Most  of  the  other  children  had  at  their  houses  and 
bragged  about  it  awfully.  It  all  seemed  part  of 
our  difference  from  other  people,  like  our  clothes. 
But  I  did  not  want  a  smallpox  funeral,  as  Lizzie 
said  no  mourners  were  allowed  to  go  to  those.  So 
I  quite  sympathized  with  our  nurse,  a  person  I 
remember  only  as  a  being  who  pushed  baby  car 
riages  and  dragged  a  protesting  Me  about  the 
streets,  when  she  always  crossed  over  to  the  other 
side  if  we  came  to  one  of  the  smallpox  signs.  And  " 
as  I  zigzagged  on  our  walks  I  got  the  impression 
that  smallpox  was  a  creature  ready  to  jump  out 
like  a  jack-in-a-box  and  seize  us  if  we  ever  got 
within  reach  of  his  arms,  or  if  we  even  looked 
afraid  he  had  some  strange  power  over  us.  So  I 
used  to  walk  past  the  signs  with  a  very  brave  and 
unconcerned  expression  of  countenance  to  deceive 
him,  though  inside  Una  Mary  quaked  with  her  old 
mysterious  fear  and  was  always  afraid  the  Imp 
would  in  some  way  betray  me. 

My  brave  outside  was  very  much  like  my  be-v, 
havior  one  night  when  I  thought  I  heard  burglars 
in  the  next  room.     I  knew  Mamma  and  Papasjiad 


ii2  UNA  MARY 

gone  to  a  party,  and  I  was  afraid  the  burglars  would 
kill  my  small  sister  who  was  in  their  room,  and  I 
knew  if  I  screamed  or  acted  as  if  I  were  afraid 
everybody  would  be  killed  at  once.  Our  nurse  had 
said  burglars  always  killed  people  who  were  scared. 
So  I  decided  to  frighten  them  off  in  a  way  they 
would  never  suspect,  and,  quaking  with  terror, 
my  throat  so  dry  I  could  scarcely  make  a  sound, 
I  called  as  loudly  as  I  could,  "Mamma,  Mamma, 
I've  got  an  awful  pain!"  and  when  Mamma  came 
running  in — for  of  course  it  was  she  I  had  heard, 
back  from  the  party — I  was  so  relieved  I  took  the 
Jamaica  ginger  she  gave  me  without  a  murmur. 

The  next  summer  while  we  were  in  New  Hamp 
shire  the  famous  " yellow  day"  shut  in  upon  us  like 
a  dry  and  very  yellow  fog.  Darker  and  darker  it 
grew.  The  air  was  breathless  and  still  and  the 
sun,  which  had  seemed  when  I  got  up  to  be  an 
orange  balloon  waiting  in  suspense  in  the  sky  to  see 
what  was  going  to  happen,  gradually  grew  paler 
and  paler  until  it  looked  like  the  moon  by  daylight. 
The  lamps  had  to  be  lighted  for  lunch  and  the 
chickens  all  went  to  roost  at  noon.  The  cows 
refused  to  eat  and  stood  huddled  in  a  group  at 
the  pasture  bars,  and  all  day  the  horses  neighed 
despairingly. 

The  "Millerites,"  a  sect  of  Second  Adventists, 
of  whom  there  were  five  in  the  town,  said  it  was 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  113 

the  end  of  the  world  their  leader  had  predicted,  so 
they  wound  themselves  in  sheets  and  climbed  to 
the  roof  of  a  barn  and  all  day  they  sat  there  like 
enormous  white  birds,  lamenting  the  destruction 
of  the  world  and  praying  and  exhorting  the  rest  of 
us  to  join  them  before  it  was  too  late,  and  the  tears 
streamed  down  their  faces  as  they  prayed.  One  of 
them  was  the  hired  man  on  our  farm,  and  it  seemed 
very  strange  to  think  of  him  as  among  the  very  few 
elect.  No  one  else  joined  them,  but  the  sight  of 
them  on  the  roof,  combined  with  the  eerie  quality 
in  the  day  and  the  awful  stillness  broken  only  by 
their  prayers  and  the  cries  of  frightened  animals, 
so  worked  upon  the  nerves  of  the  whole  community 
that  the  bells  of  the  church  were  rung  to  call  the 
people  to  prayer-meeting  and  there  all  the  ortho 
dox  gathered  and  prayed  that  the  end  of  the  world 
might  be  postponed,  and  it  was  all  their  fault, 
"working  on  the  sympathies  of  the  Lord,"  that 
prevented  the  Millerites  from  " rising  up  to  glory" 
— so,  at  least,  the  Millerites  said  afterward  to  ex 
plain  the  fact  that  about  nine  o'clock  they  climbed 
down  from  the  roof,  very  tired  and  hungry,  for  of 
course  no  one  of  them  had  bothered  about  food 
on  that  their  last  exalted  day. 

I  saw  one  woman  stirring  up  some  chicken  food 
— the  famished  hens  collected  about  her  feet — still 
dressed  in  her  sheet  that  flopped  clumsily  at  every 
movement  of  her  arm. 


ii4  UNA  MARY 

The  hired  man  stayed  all  night  on  the  roof,  and 
it  almost  broke  his  heart  that  the  end  of  the  world 
did  not  come.  When  you  have  expected  to  "float 
in  glory,  blowing  on  a  golden  trumpet  near  the 
throne/'  it  is  hard  next  day  to  have  to  kill  potato- 
bugs  instead. 

I  had  been  much  excited  all  day  myself,  but 
rather  interested  than  frightened,  I  was  so  curious 
as  to  what  it  would  be  like  if  the  world  did  end. 
Yet  it  made  me  distinctly  nervous  tHat  Mamma 
had  not  gone  to  the  prayer-meeting.  Perhaps  that 
would  count  against  her  if  it  were  the  Day  of  Judg 
ment.  I  myself  did  creep  into  the  back  of  the 
church,  and  there  that  usually  satisfied  and  deco 
rous  assembly  were  praying  and  crying  like  the 
"shouting  Methodist"  our  cook  once  took  me  to 
see.  The  whole  day  was  decidedly  a  strain  and 
most  disquieting,  and  my  Imp  kept  reminding  me 
of  all  the  things  I  had  done  that  I  ought  not  to 
have  done.  And  even  if  the  world  did  not  end,  the 
yellow  day  itself  was  still  a  fact,  an  unexplained 
and  creepy  fact.  It  had  come  upon  us  from  some 
where  and  many  more  like  it  might  descend  upon 
us,  and  then  I  was  sure  we  should  all  scream.  If 
it  had  only  done  something  it  would  have  been 
more  bearable.  One  longed  for  a  terrific  thunder 
storm  to  shatter  the  heavy  stillness. 

The  last  spring  we  lived  in  Cincinnati  was  the 


THE  UNKNOWN  POWER  115 

year  of  one  of  the  great  Ohio  floods,  and  Harry  and 
I 'were  taken  down  to  see  it.  We  drove  through 
blocks  and  blocks  of  streets  where  the  water  came 
to  the  hubs  of  the  wheels  of  our  carriage  and  all 
the  lower  stories  of  the  houses  were  flooded,  the 
people  living  up-stairs  and  going  about  in  boats 
that  they  had  to  climb  out  of  windows  to  reach. 

Finally,  we  came  to  a  place  where  we  could  go 
up  some  steps  to  the  bridge,  and  from  there  we  saw 
the  whole  snarling,  turbulent,  orange-colored  mon 
ster  foaming  down  upon  us,  tossing  uprooted  trees 
and  wreckage  like  the  leaves  on  a  brook.  There 
were  even  whole  houses,  small  wooden  ones,  tum 
bling  along  on  their  sides,  jerked  this  way  and  that, 
their  slanting  windows  looking  up  at  us  with  a 
cock-eyed  expression  of  despair  as  they  went  reel 
ing  under  us.  Harry  had  a  splendid  time  counting 
the  objects  that  tore  past  us,  some  dangerously 
near  the  bridge,  and  longed  for  a  house  with 
wrecked  family  inside.  But  it  was  the  river  itself 
that  fascinated  and  appalled  me.  I  felt  I  was 
in  the  very  Presence  of  the  Person  itself  of  all  the 
terrors  that  I  had  vaguely  and  awfully  felt  during 
my  life.  It  was  the  sum  total  of  all  Una  Mary's 
nightmares  personified  into  this  gigantic,  implac 
able  wild  beast,  which  yet  was  not  a  wild  beast 
and  was  more  terrible  so.  He  was  alive,  untam 
able,  impersonal,  and  to  be  touched  by  no  appeal. 


ii6  UNA  MARY 


very  sky,  dimmed  by  the  mist  of  his  foaming, 
seemed  remote  and  helpless. 

It  was  so  wild  and  fierce  I  knew  it  was  like  Death 
and  smallpox  and  war.  Everything  dreadful  that 
I  knew  or  had  imagined  was  summed  up  in  that 
Flood,  and  later,  when  I  heard  of  the  "  Wrath  of 
God,"  I  knew  it  must  be  like  that  seething  ma 
lignity. 


•s 


CHAPTER  VIII 

V 

UNA'S  TASTE  AND  UNA  MARY'S  WONDER 

AS  I  look  back  over  those  eight  years  when  we 
•*  ^  lived  in  Cincinnati  I  cannot  remember  a  sin 
gle  funny  thing  that  happened — that  seemed  funny 
to  me  at  the  time,  I  mean.  I  cannot  tell  whether 
my  sense  of  humor  did  not  develop  until  later  or 
whether  nothing  of  the  sort  made  a  lasting  impres 
sion  upon  me.  The  only  things  from  books  that 
appealed  to  my  sense  of  humor  began  with  "Hey! 
diddle  diddle. "  That  the  dish  ran  away  with 
the  spoon  just  because  the  cow  jumped  over  the 
moon  seemed  to  me  deliciously  absurd,  exuberantly 
funny.  But  funnier  still  was  "John  Gilpin's  Ride.'7 
I  had  it  with  Caldicott's  illustrations,  and  both 
the  pictures  and  the  text  were  an  unfailing  source 
of  laughter.  Dear,  fat  John  Gilpin  with  his  bald 
pate,  clinging  fast  to  his  horse's  neck  while  his  wig 
and  cloak  float  down  the  wind  behind  him !  All  the 
Caldicott  picture-books  I  liked,  but  "  John  Gilpin" 
best  of  all.  He  seemed  really  funniest;  and  then, 
too,  there  was  nothing  to  be  sorry  for  as  there  was 
117 


n8  UNA  MARY 

in  the  "Mad  Dog."     The  expression  of  that  poor 
dog  haunts  me  to  this  day. 

Among  my  father's  books  I  discovered  "The 
Foreign  Tour  of  Brown,  Jones,  and  Robinson"  and 
their  absurd  troubles  while  travelling  in  Europe. 
For  years  all  my  ideas  of  foreign  travel  were  based 
on  their  adventures,  and  I  have  never  quite  gotten 
over  my  disappointment  each  time  I  go  abroad  to 
find  it  all  so  tame.  I  feel  the  fault  must  lie  with 
me.  There  are  now  no  stage-coaches,  to  be  sure, 
but  Brown,  Jones,  and  Robinson  going  over  now 
would  still,  I  feel  sure,  show  their  old  capacity 
for  creating  situations.  Neither  steam  nor  elec 
tric  lights  could  deter  them  from  getting  in  and 
out  of  difficulties.  Every  one  ought  to  have  been 
brought  up  on  that  book.  And  there  was  another 
which  ranked  with  it  in  my  estimation,  "The  Ad 
ventures  of  Mr.  Obadiah  Oldbuck."  This  was  a 
series  of  comic  drawings  illustrating  his  wonderful 
exploits  in  search  of  a  sweetheart.  I  found  this 
book  in  my  grandfather's  attic  and  each  time  I 
went  there  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  poring  over 
its  pages.  How  many  people,  I  wonder,  have  had 
the  privilege  of  knowing  Mr.  Obadiah,  his  dog, 
and  his  horse,  and  of  watching  the  Beloved  Object 
grow  fat  or  thin  according  to  the  nature  of  her 
adventures?  Very  few  people,  I  am  sure,  really 
know  what  it  means  to  turn  over  a  new  leaf,  a  per- 


UNA'S  TASTE  119 

fectly  simple  proceeding  as  it  only  means  putting  < 
on  a  clean  shirt.     Mr.  Obadiah  does  it  between 
all  his  attempts  at  suicide;  just  disappears  com 
pletely  under  a  fresh  shirt,  emerges  a  new  man, 
and,  of  course,  his  luck  changes  at  once. 

Many  of  the  books  that  made  grown  people 
laugh  seemed  to  me  pathetic  instead.  Most  of 
the  Anderson  stories  made  me  weep  and  his  humor 
wholly  escaped  me.  They  made  me  so  miserable 
that  I  finally  refused  to  have  them  read  aloud, 
though  I  loved  fairy-tales  and  was  devoted  to 
Grimm.  Two  other  books  that  always  made  me 
weep  were  " Pilgrim's  Progress"  and  "Water  Ba 
bies."  These  we  gave  up  in  the  middle  and  I 
have  never  to  this  day  been  able  to  finish  either 
of  them. 

I  had  several  picture-books  by  Kate  Greenaway 
which  I  liked  immensely,  and  was  delighted  to  see 
that  the  houses  she  drew  were  very  like  the  funny 
gabled  one  in  which  I  had  been  born,  which  was  so 
unlike  any  other  house  I  had  ever  seen.  It  made 
me  feel  quite  related  to  the  Greenaway  children. 
And  then  I  had  Walter  Crane's  illustrated  fairy 
tales,  but  those  were  too  sacred  to  be  talked  about 
as  he  almost,  not  quite,  drew  My  Country  in  them. 

On  one  of  my  birthdays  I  was  given  a  book  I 
wish  all  children  could  have.  We  called  it  the 
"Big  Book."  It  had  been  lent  and  rebound  so 


120  UNA  MARY 

many  times  the  title-page  was  lost,  but  I  have 
since  discovered  its  real  name  is  "The  Children's 
Book,"  compiled  by  Horace  Scudder,  a  collection 
of  classics  for  children  in  poetry  and  prose,  mainly 
fables,  ballads,  and  fairy-tales,  as  I  recall  it.  It 
was  the  source  of  most  of  the  material  that  made 
up  My  Country,  though  Grimm  had  contributed 
his  share;  and  two  other  books  that  helped  were 
Irving's  "  Tales  of  the  Alhambra"  and  his  "  Con 
quest  of  Granada.'* 

In  Irving  I  loved  the  combinations  of  descrip 
tions  of  scenery  and  palaces  and  the  romantic  ad 
ventures  of  the  characters  with  wonderful  names 
and  strange  titles  that  sounded  a  good  deal  like 
the  Arabian  Nights  and  yet  were  different  and  nw 
to  me.  I  remember  the  horror  of  one  of  my  moth 
er's  friends  when,  in  answer  to  her  question  as  to 
what  I  wanted  to  be  when  I  grew  up,  I  said:  "The 
Illegitimate  Son  of  an  Illegitimate  Son.  They  al 
ways  have  such  wonderful  adventures  in  Granada." 
And,  of  course,  one  of  the  favorite  heroes  in  My 
Country  was  a  reckless,  melancholy  Moor,  an  Ille 
gitimate  Son,  which  to  me  was  just  an  especially 
high-sounding  title  like  The  Heir  Apparent. 

There  was  "Don  Quixote,"  too,  with  Dore  illus 
trations,  a  large  and  sumptuous  volume  bound  in 
green  leather  tooled  with  gold.  Fantastic  he  never 
seemed  to  me.  I  took  to  him  quite  gravely  and 


UNA'S  TASTE  121 

sympathetically.  And  there  were  many  other 
books,  all  dearer  to  me  and  of  more  moment  in 
my  life  than  most  of  the  people  I  have  known. 

If  I  lacked  a  sense  of  humor,  a  sense  of  beauty 
I  surely  had,  a  very  acute  one  of  my  own  kind, 
though  what  people  usually  meant  when  they 
said  things  were  pretty  or  beautiful  puzzled  me 
greatly  as  I  rarely  agreed  with  them,  and  they 
seemed  quite  indifferent  to  all  that  I  thought  beau 
tiful.  Easter  Eggs,  for  instance,  I  greatly  admired, 
the  kind  with  a  hole  in  front  edged  with  pink  sugar 
roses,  where  I  could  look  through  a  pane  of  glass 
into  a  fairy-tale  world  of  houses,  people,  and  ani-  i 
mals,  all  standing  in  moss  of  the  most  violent  ani 
line  green  with  the  translucent  arch  of  the  sugar  egg 
for  its  sky.  These  I  considered  supremely  beau 
tiful  ;  and  of  the  same  high  order  were  balls  of  glass 
— I  gave  one  to  Papa  one  Christmas  for  a  paper 
weight — that  had  whole  scenes  inside  them,  a  good 
deal  like  the  Easter-Egg  scenery,  only  here  it  was 
always  winter  with  snow  over  everything,  and 
when  you  shook  the  ball  and  stood  it  up  again  you 
had  stirred  up  a  driving  snow-storm  that  filled  the 
whole  country  inside  the  ball  and  took  five  whole 
minutes  to  settle  again.  I  had  my  eggs  hard-boiled 
by  it  instead  of  the  dull  minute-glass  the  rest  of 
the  family  used. 

Of  this  same  quality  of  beauty  were  Valentines, 


122  UNA  MARY 

Real  Valentines,  that  came  in  large,  embossed  en 
velopes  and  opened  up  layer  on  layer  of  lace  paper 
like  an  accordion,  framing  some  deep-set  face  of 
doll-like  loveliness  or  a  painted  cupid  with  his 
bow  and  arrows  aimed  straight  at  you;  and  dec 
orating  the  lace  were  detached  flowers,  hearts,  and 
linked  hands  fastened  on  at  random  and  looking 
almost  as  lovely  as  Lizzie's  dress  when  she  went 
to  the  Policemen's  Fancy  Dress  Ball  with  Pat  and 
wore  white  tarlatan  on  which  I  had  helped  her  sew 
dozens  and  dozens  of  real  red  and  yellow  autumn 
leaves.  I  told  Pat  she  looked  lovely  enough  to  be 
a  Valentine,  which  made  Lizzie  turn  as  red  as  one 
of  the  leaves,  and  Pat  gave  me  a  brand-new  cent 
as  bright  as  gold. 

All  this  sense  of  beauty  belonged  to  Una.  Una 
Mary  cared  only  for  the  things  that  were  of  a  love 
liness  I  could  scarcely  believe.  Among  the  pictures 
that  Una  liked  best  were  the  illustrations  that  came 
with  the  Christmas  number  of  the  London  Graphic. 
They  were  large  and  colored  and  decorated  the 
nursery  walls  for  years.  There  was  one  of  Miss 
Muffet  that  I  considered  very  fine.  She  sat  on  a 
stool  dressed  in  white  with  black  mitts  and  a  blue 
ribbon  round  the  crown  of  her  cap,  from  below 
which  curled  hair  that  looked  like  molasses  candy. 
And  there  was  another  of  two  little  girls  in  pink 
mob-caps  with  smocked  dresses  to  match  standing 


UNA'S  TASTE  123 

beside  a  gray  wolfhound.  This  for  years  was  my 
ideal  of  Art  and  made  me  change  Una  Mary's 
every-day  costume  from  white  ruffled  muslin  to  a 
pink  smocked  frock. 

The  paintings  that  hung  in  our  parlor,  painted 
by  a  young  Cincinnati  artist  who  has  since  become 
very  famous,  I  heartily  despised — they  were,  to 
my  mind,  so  dauby.  They  were  heads  of  people, 
but  so  blurred  I  could  not  make  out  their  fea 
tures  clearly.  The  landscape  that  hung  near  them, 
"The  Picture,"  as  it  was  called  with  almost  bated 
^  breath,  I  liked  better.  I  loved  the  patch  fof  sun 
light  on  its  meadow  and  the  mountains  wreathed 
in  mist.  In  it  I  could  almost  feel  my  own  Beyond 
the  Mountains. 

This  picture  was  a  great  family  event.  It  had 
hung  during  the  winter  in  the  window  of  an  art 
store  and  been  greatly  admired  by  all  our  friends 
but  was  too  expensive  for  any  of  them  to  buy;  and 
then  one  day  as  my  father  was  passing  it  wa4 
marked  with  a  ridiculously  low  price,  the  painter 
being  anxious  to  sell  it,  and  Papa  had  gone  in  and 
bought  it  at  once — the  one  family  extravagance. 
It  was  years  before  we  could  afford  a  proper  gold 
frame  for  it,  but,  unframed  or  framed,  it  has  always 
hung  in  the  place  of  honor  in  the  parlor  ever  since 
that  breathless  day  when  Papa  brought  the  huge 
bundle  home  himself  and  untied  it  before  Mamma,- 


i24  UNA  MARY 

who  almost  cried  with  pleasure.  And  later  the 
excitement  of  all  our  friends  at  our  luck  in  getting 
it  and  their  admiration  of  the  picture  itself  were 
to  me  tremendous.  Every  one  who  came  to  the 
hou^e  I  used  to  take  into  the  parlor  at  once  "to 
see  our  picture."  I  felt  as  if  Papa  had  been 
knighted  or  some  equally  great  honor  bestowed 
upon  the  family  with  its  ownership. 

This  one  picture  really  appealed  to  Una  Mary, 
had  in  it  some  of  the  sky  quality  that  always  made 
her  throat  ache,  and  I  loved  it.  But  I  got  more 
real  enjoyment  out  of  the  Easter-Egg  style  of 
beauty,  and  I  greatly  liked  textures  and  stuffs, 
especially  if  they  were  draped. 

I  remember  the  summer  Garfield  was  shot  prin 
cipally  by  the  mourning  festooning  all  the  princi 
pal  buildings.  We  were  in  the  country  at  the  time 
and  heard  a  man  galloping  through  the  village 
street  on  horseback  shouting:  "The  President  has 
been  shot."  My  father  rushed  to  the  window  to 
question  him,  and  then  I  heard  Papa  say:  "It 
can't  be  true.  There  must  be  some  mistake." 
But  the  next  day  we  heard  it  was  true,  and  later, 
when  he  died,  they  draped  the  pillars  of  the  town 
hall  and  the  porch  of  the  church  with  black  cloth, 
beautifully  festooned  and  resetted,  so  satisfying 
to  my  sense  of  decoration  that  I  wished  Presidents 
would  die  often. 


UNA'S  TASTE  125 

mother  seemed  to  me  the  most  absolutely 
beautiful  person  I  had  ever  seen.  Her  light,  curly 
hair  and  blue  eyes  seemed  to  me  perfection;  in 
fact,  there  was  only  one  thing  about  her  that  failed 
to  satisfy  me  absolutely — her  clothes!  Again  that 
tragic  difference,  and  I  felt  it  for  her  as  keenly  as  ' 
"  I  felt  my  own  queerness  in  dress.  It  never  occurred 
to  me  that  she  chose  to  dress  as  she  did;  it  seemed 
some  sort  of  curse  on  our  whole  family. 

The  people  I  most  admired,  especially  our  ser 
vants  on  their  "days  out,"  wore  very  large  and 
swaying  bustles  with  great  wobs  of  clothes  bunched 
out  behind,  "and  in  front  lovely  festooned  over- 
skirts  draped  in  folds  as  deep  as  pockets,  while 
Mamma  wore  scarcely  any  bustle  at  all  and 
only  straight,  simple  draperies.  I  would  have  died 
rather  than  admit  it  to  any  one,  but  to  me  her 
clothes  did  a  little  mar  her  beauty. 

I  was  especially  troubled  about  it  after  I  over 
heard  two  old  ladies  in  the  country  discussing  her. 
These  pillars  of  respectability  still  wore  hoop-skirts, 
probably  the  only  ones  in  existence.  It  always 
fascinated  me  to  see  their  balloon-like  swaying  as 
they  walked.  They  wore  them  conscientiously, 
feeling  it  a  duty  to  themselves  and  the  community 
as  a  protest  against  the  terrible  immodesty  of  the 
age.  One  of  them  had  just  said:  "I'll  keep  my 
modesty  to  the  end.  If  I  be  the  only  righteous 


i26  UNA  MARY 

person  left,  I'll  go  to  my  coffin  dressed  in  hoops." 
And  I  was  wondering  what  modesty  meant  when 
the  other  old  lady  answered:  "Me,  too.  It's  a 
Christian  example.  What  is  the  world  a-comin' 
to  when  people  goes  out  a'  doors  with  nothin'  but 
a  bustle  to  cloak  their  form?  And  now,  there's 
this  lady  from  the  city  who  hain't  got  no  more 
bustle  'n  if  she  walked  out  in  her  petticoat."  I 
naturally  concluded  modesty  meant  fashionable- 
ness  and  felt  it  keenly  that  other  people  should  see, 
as  I  did,  that  Mamma  was  unfashionable.  The 
Imp  gloated  over  her  clothes. 

Later,  when  I  was  eight  years  old  and  first  went 
to  dancing-school,  I  found  that  all  the  other  little 
girls  wore  bustles  or  reeds,  long  pieces  of  bamboo 
tied  at  the  ends  so  that  they  stuck  out  behind  like 
half  a  barrel  hoop,  and  I  begged  so  hard  to  stick 
out  myself  that  in  a  new  maroon  cashmere  made 
in  the  middle  of  the  winter  I  was  allowed  to  have 
a  sash  arranged  almost  like  an  overskirt,  and  in 
the  back  one  small  reed  but  tied  so  limply  that  it 
scarcely  showed  at  all. 

The  dress  came  just  to  my  knees  and  seemed  to 
me  the  height  of  elegance,  especially  after  I  had 
gotten  to  the  dressing-room  at  dancing-school  and 
had  tied  the  two  ends  of  the  reed  until  they  almost 
met.  I  always  brought  a  piece  of  string  for  that 
purpose,  and  then,  looking  back  over  my  shoulder, 


UNA'S  TASTE  127 

I  could  see  a  flat  table-land  of  cashmere  going 
straight  out  from  my  waist  with  the  ends  of  my 
sash  cascading  over  its  edge.  How  I  must  have 
looked  with  skirts  only  to  my  knees  in  front! — I 
shudder  to  think  where  they  were  hoisted  to  be 
hind — but  none  of  the  other  children  noticed  any 
thing  except  my  style;  and  as  our  parents  were 
only  allowed  to  come  on  Exhibition  days,  the  rest 
of  the  time  I  "switched  my  bustle/'  as  the  darkies 
expressed  it,  to  my  heart's  content. 

Una  Mary  appreciated  beauty  of  quite  another 
order.  She  felt  it  always  in  flowers.  The  first 
grief  I  ever  had  was  once  when  I  knocked  a  ge- 
\  ranium  off  a  window-sill  in  the  second  story  and  on 
running  to  the  yard  to  pick  it  up  found  it  broken 
to  bits,  plant  and  pot  all  mixed  in  with  lumps  of 
earth,  and  my  agony  of  grief  that  I  had  killed  so 
lovely  a  thing,  and  then  the  hopelessness  of  ever 
being  understood  when  the  family,  to  comfort  me, 
said  they  knew  it  was  an  accident,  so,  of  course, 
I  should  not  be  punished. 

When  we  went  to  Boston  each  spring  to  visit 
my  grandmother  we  took  a  car  at  the  corner  of 
Bowdoin  Square  to  go  out  to  Cambridge.  The  car 
only  ran  every  half-hour,  so  the  waits  were  often 
long;  but  the  longer  the  better  for  me,  as  there  was 
a  bird  store  on  the  corner  with  windows  full  of 
tiny  cages  of  marvellous  and  dainty  birds  of  quite 


128  UNA  MARY 

unbelievable  colors  and  shapes,  and  the  air  was 
sweet  always,  above  the  roar  of  the  city,  light  and 
g  clear  with  the  songs  of  canaries  and  faint,  woodsy 

twitterings  or  liquid  cascades  of  melody  from  birds 
I  did  not  know.  The  shop  was  kept  by  a  little  old 
man  who  was  lame,  and  I  think  he  was  the  only 
real  person  that  Una  Mary  ever  envied. 

Often,  sitting  in  front  of  the  store — I  am  sure 
they  chose  that  place  because  of  the  birds,  as  I 
should  have  done — were  boys  selling  pond-lilies. 
They  had  them  in  buckets,  masses  of  wonderful, 
sweet  white  perfection,  smelling,  it  seemed  to  me,  as 
the  canaries  sounded.  I  thought  them  the  most 
beautiful  flowers  I  had  ever  seen,  and  I  had  all  the 
ponds  in  My  Country  covered  with  them,  and  only 
Edward  or  Una  Mary  were  allowed  to  pick  them. 

When  I  was  ill  once  in  Cambridge — I  was  ill 
quite  often  in  those  days — I  asked  for  some  pond- 
lilies,  and  my  aunt  that  evening  brought  me  two 
from  Boston,  and  I  cried  with  disappointment 
because  I  wanted  a  whole  pailful.  I  wanted  both 
arms  full  of  their  loveliness,  not  just  two  single 
flowers.  My  aunt  said  I  was  greedy  and,  to  pun 
ish  me,  was  going  to  take  away  the  ones  she  had 
brought  me,  but  I  begged  so  hard  I  was  allowed  to 
keep  them;  and,  as  the  first  disappointment  had 
worn  off  by  then,  I  lay  looking  with  perfect  rapture 
at  the  two  flowers  lying  on  the  sheet  on  either  side 


UNA'S  TASTE  129 

of  me,  though  my  grandmother  said  I  looked  as  if 
I  was  "laid  out,"  whatever  that  meant.  They 
seemed  the  most  perfect  and  exquisite  things  on 
earth,  too  lovely  for  earth,  more  like  flowers 
dropped  from  the  crown  of  some  Goddess.  .  . 

Both  families  of  my  grandparents  lived  in  sub-  \ 
urbs  of  Boston,  and  both  had  gardens.    They  were 
all  flower  lovers  to  an  unusual  degree,  so  their    1 
gardens  were  lovely,  and  I  remember  the  joy  the  / 
flower-beds  gave  me  with  their  glories  of  color  and  / 
texture.     We    usually  arrived   in  the   afternoon,  \ 
and  at  once  I  rushed  to  the  garden.    After  tfye 
days  in  the  stuffy  train  from  the  West  the  sweet- 
scented  air,  the  warm  sunshine  with  a  touch  of  sea 
east  wind,  the  color,  and  the  magic  of  it  all  seemed 
more  than  I  could  believe.     It  seemed  too  beauti 
ful  for  even  Una  Mary  to  see  and  feel,  and  some 
times  my  own  unworthiness  almost  overcame  me. 
I  seemed  as  out  of  place  as  the  toad  hopping  along 
the  path.    Why  were  we  allowed  there,  the  toad 
and  I? 

I  felt  that  Una  was  very  plain,  and  I  knew  my 
aunts  thought  so  too,  for  I  had  overheard  one 
of  them  apologize  to  some  one  for  my  looks  and 
say  she  could  not  see  whom  I  looked  like  in  the 
family,  but  that  my  sisters  were  both  pretty.  And 
the  person  she  was  talking  to  had  politely  an 
swered:  " Perhaps  she'll  grow  up  better-looking." 


130  UNA  MARY 

It  all  simply  confirmed  my  own  impression.  Una 
was  plain,  and  my  only  consolation  was  that  she 
had  never  had  warts  on  her  hands. 

The  reason  for  the  ugly  things  in  the  world 
always  troubled  me.  I  could  not  see  why  God  had 
ever  made  them  until  it  occurred  to  me  they  might 
be  like  some  of  the  paper  dolls  I  painted  that  would 
turn  out  ugly  in  spite  of  all  my  efforts.  Perhaps 
we  were  just  God's  mistakes  and  He  had  really 
meant  Una  to  look  like  Una  Mary.  If  people 
could  only  see  her  I  was  sure  they  would  think  she 
was  pretty. 

I  rarely  wanted  to  pick  the  flowers  in  grand 
mother's  garden.  They  seemed  too  alive  and  per 
sonal  for  that,  but  I  used  to  love  to  take  whole 
plants  in  my  arms  and  press  my  cheek  against  the  , 
flowers  and  kiss  them.  The  roses  and  tall  Madonna 
lilies  were  the  ones  I  loved  best.  I  cared  for  them 
so  much  that  I  always  had  a  feeling  of  hurt  surprise 
when  the  thorns  pricked  me  or  the  lilies  left  telltale 
markings  of  orange  pollen  on  my  face. 

Then  there  was  a  little  pink  semi- weed  which  was 
only  tolerated  in  a  few  places  in  the  garden  that  I 
loved,  too,  because  I  felt  it  must  be  so  puzzled 
about  itself,  not  able  to  tell  if  it  were  really  a  wild 
or  a  cultivated  flower.  It  must  feel  out  of  place, 
as  I  did  in  a  group  of  Real  Girls. 

In  the  garden  in  Cambridge  there  were  two  large 


UNA'S  TASTE  131 

cherry-trees  with  a  hammock  swung  between,  and 
it  was  so  dark  and  damp  below  them  that  moss 
grew  on  the  ground  instead  of  grass,  and  at  one 
side,  in  the  perpetual  shade,  a  rockery  of  ferns  had 
been  made.  They  were  wild  ferns  from  the  woods, 
the  glamour-haunted  woods,  and  I  pitied  them  with 
all  my  heart,  prisoned  in  this  dark,  cheerless  place, 
grown  fragile  and  pale  from  homesickness,  with 
fat,  vulgar,  prosperous  robins  hopping  about  and 
eating  cherries  all  over  them.  How  those  robins 
did  disgust  me!  I  have  never  liked  them.  They 
seem  so  typically  nouveau  riche. 

There  were  syringa  bushes  behind  the  fernery 
and  bushes  with  uncanny  white  berries.  For  some 
reason  I  felt  they  were  all  enemies  of  the  ferns  and 
I  hated  them.  I  loathe  syringa  to  this  day.  When 
I  was  ten  my  grandmother  sold  this  place,  and  so 
deep  was  my  feeling  for  the  forlornness  of  the  part 
of  the  garden  shaded  by  the  cherry-trees  that  when 
I  grew  up,  though  I  spent  eleven  years  living  in 
Boston,  I  never  once  felt  willing  to  go  down  that 
street  and  pass  her  house — the  little  red  house  that 
I  had  really  liked.  I  could  not  bear  to  see  those 
same  complacent  robins  and  the  bland  syringas. 
The  ferns  I  felt  sure  were  dead.  They  could  not 
have  survived  such  companionship  for  all  those 
years. 

Morning-glories  or  poppies  with  the  sunlight  on 


132  UNA  MARY 

them  I  adored.  They  seemed  like  butterflies, 
tangible  spirits  of  air  and  light.  I  knew  light  was 
many-colored.  I  had  seen  it  broken  by  a  prism 
into  a  rainbow  on  our  dining-room  ceiling,  for  a 
glass  prism  always  hung  in  one  of  the  dining-room 
windows.  Una  Mary  used  to  love  to  "Play  But 
terfly"  by  making  it  move  in  the  sunlight  with  one 
hand,  while  with  the  other  hand  she  tried  to  catch 
the  changing,  darting  color  spot  that  danced  like 
magic  from  floor  to  ceiling. 

Another  favorite  game  was  "Playing  the  Wind" 
with  pieces  of  down  or  small  feathers  squeezed  out 
of  the  corners  of  pillows.  This  game  really  be 
longed  to  Una,  as  I  shared  it  with  other  children, 
but  Una  Mary  invented  it.  We  used  to  blow  the 
feathers  off  the  tips  of  our  fingers  and  follow  them 
about  the  room,  blowing  all  the  time  to  keep  them 
in  the  air.  We  had  races  to  see  whose  feathers 
could  stay  up  longest.  I  had  one  much-coveted 
piece  of  down  that  was  the  champion,  it  was  so 
soft  and  light.  I  was  offered  two  real  agate  mar 
bles  and  a  top  in  exchange  for  it,  but  I  scorned  to 
barter  it  away  though  I  confess  the  agates  had  a 
charm  that  was  very  powerful.  Stones  of  all  kinds 
always  fascinated  me,  and  when  they  were  semi- 
transparent  as  agates  often  were  they  had  a  real 
magic  about  them.  Quartz  crystals  I  had  loved 
from  the  Minerva  days,  and  later  I  saw  them  in 


UNA'S  TASTE  133 

the  rocks  in  Maine  and  found  other  crystals  too. 
I  was  never  tired  of  hunting  for  these  wild  min 
erals,  as  I  called  them.  I  discovered  tiny  garnets 
in  the  granite  and  found  that  they  often  lay  loose 
in  the  disintegrated  rocks,  in  the  cracks,  or  at  the 
foot  of  the  large,  gray  bowlders.  There  was  one 
great  rock  in  the  Sheep  Pasture  that  was  especially 
rich  in  them.  I  have  patiently  sifted  the  sand  at 
its  base  for  hours,  picking  out  the  tiny  red  balls, 
some  almost  too  small  to  see,  the  largest  no  bigger 
than  the  head  of  a  fair-sized  pin,  but  each  one  a 
complete  and  perfect  crystal  complete  in  itself  and 
fulfilling  all  the  laws  of  its  kind.  One  could  so  rely 
upon  minerals;  they  always  did  exactly  what  they 
were  supposed  to  do.  Their  variations  were  only 
trifling  details  of  size  and  clearness,  though  they 
did  do  surprising  things  in  regard  to  color  now 
and  then.  For  instance,  one  of  my  father's  assis 
tants  in  the  laboratory  discovered  a  white  garnet. 
He  gave  me  a  piece,  as  garnet  is  my  birthstone. 
It  looks  like  a  piece  of  white  jade.  So,  even 
stones  were  not  wholly  reliable,  after  all — a  dis 
covery  that  shocked  Una  Mary,  but  the  Imp  said : 
"  Of  course." 


CHAPTER  IX 

. '          •    v  '•••  —  ' 

SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA 

•;/•' 

T  WAS  four  years  old,  I  think,  when  I  first  saw 

•*•  the  sea.  My  mother  always  longed  for  it  as 
only  those  born  by  the  sea  and  living  in  the  great, 
flat  Middle  West  can  long,  and  always  she  had  told 
me  about  it  and  took  me  to  see  it  as  a  sacred  rite. 
We  went  to  a  beach  near  Boston,  probably  Nan- 
tasket,  and  as  my  mother  held  my  hand  and 
breathed  full  breaths  of  rapture  I  looked  at  her  in 
amazement.  What  could  she  find  to  love  in  this 
tame,  lead-colored  streak  that  vaguely  rippled  at 
our  feet!  It  was  one  of  the  great  disappointments 
of  my  life. 

Later  we  spent  three  summers  at  East  Glouces 
ter  and  there  I,  too,  learned  to  love  the  sea,  love 
it  as  I  do  the  sky,  for  then  I  lived  with  it 
and  heard  it  talk  to  me  in  all  its  vast  variety  of 
being.  I  knew  and  loved  it,  glittering  and  calm 
as  glass,  on  sun-bleached  August  days.  I  knew  it, 
green  and  sullen,  gathering  passion  for  a  storm,  or 
copper-gray  in  the  sultry  hush  of  thunder-laden  air. 
I  knew  it,  blue  and  joyous,  the  dancing  waves 

134 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  135 

white-tipped  as  they  pressed  in  from  the  bay.  I 
knew  it  in  the  Equinox,  when  all  the  world  was 
flying  scud  of  sky  and  sea,  waves  breaking  on 
the  clouds  and  tearing  at  the  rocks,  the  air  a  salt- 
laden  lash  of  rain  and  spray. 

I  saw  a  shipwreck  and  I  saw  monstrous,  serpent- 
like  leaves  of  seaweed  torn  from  the  very  heart  of 
the  deep,  they  were  so  large  and  black,  tossed  with 
the  wreckage  on  the  shore.  It  was  like  the  Ohio 
River  in  flood;  and  then  I  knew  the  sea,  too,  was 
the  voice  of  God,  but  a  voice  gentle  and  serene 
after  the  day  of  wrath.  So,  with  the  stars  and 
trees  and  the  feeling  of  the  sky  behind  the  moun 
tains,  the  sea  became  part  of  Una  Mary's  worship 
and  her  love. 

The  sea!  Every  sort  of  enchantment  is  bound 
up  with  the  word.  There  was  the  tossing  creature 
itself  to  be  watched,  gloried  in,  and  worshipped. 
I  never  felt  any  fear  of  it,  only  exaltation  and  a 
wild  sympathy  even  with  its  fiercest  storms.  And 
then  there  was  the  shore!  the  beach  trampled 
flat  by  the  tides,  smooth  as  a  floor  made  of  tiny 
particles  of  glittering,  many-colored  stones.  I 
used  to  let  the  sand  trickle  through  my  fingers  to 
see  the  different  shapes  pid  colors  as  they  fell  upon 
my  lap.  And  more  brilliant  and  beautiful  even 
were  the  shells  and  bits  of  seaweed,  yellow,  vivid 
green,  and  pink,  scattered  with  larger  stones  on 


136  UNA  MARY 

the  gleaming,  golden  beach,  all  brought  by  the 
waves  as  presents  from  the  sea  to  me. 

Some  of  the  pebbles  were  dark,  some  white,  some 
so  smooth  they  felt  like  velvet  and  seemed  almost 
warm  against  my  cheek.  These  soft-feeling  ones 
I  used  to  hunt  for  especially,  to  keep  as  pets.  I 
called  them  Una  Mary's  cats.  They  were  very 
consoling  to  stroke,  and  even  in  the  cold  city  winter 
the  feel  of  them  brought  back  like  magic  the  sun- 
warmed  beach  under  a  kind  blue  sky,  with  days  of 
long,  untroubled  joyousness  in  a  world  ready  made 
for  Una  Mary — days  untroubled  by  the  Imp,  for 
he  never  existed  by  the  sea.  It  was  all  too  vast  to 
allow  his  corroding  littleness. 

Then  there  were  the  rare,  most-coveted  pebbles, 
rough,  as  a  rule,  with  a  ring  of  another  color  going 
round  them  like  a  collar.  These,  of  course,  were 
my  dogs.  I  had  an  oblong,  brownish,  streaky  one 
with  a  very  distinct  collar  that  was  my  favorite  of 
them  all.  I  named  him  Carlo,  after  my  aunt's  dog. 
Once  when  I  lost  him  out  of  my  pocket  I  walked 
up  and  down  the  beach  all  the  morning  calling, 
" Carlo,  Carlo!''  sure  that  if  he  heard  me  he  would 
in  some  way  will  me  to  hunt  in  the  place  where  he 
was,  and,  sure  enough,  I  felt  impelled  to  look  in  a 
tiny  pool  among  the  rocks  where  I  felt  certain  I 
could  not  have  lost  him.  Yet  there  he  lay.  I  loved 
him  with  a  deep  devotion  and  felt  sure  there  was 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  137 

real  understanding  between  us.  For  three  whole 
summers  I  played  with  him,  but  only  in  the  sum 
mers.  I  could  not  bear  to  take  him  to  town  with 
me,  away  from  the  beach  and  the  smell  of  the  sea. 
It  was  all  necessary  to  Carlo.  He  would  have 
smothered  in  the  city.  I  did  not  mind  taking  the 
cats;  they  could  get  along  anywhere.  So  Mamma 
always  had  to  pay  excess  luggage,  I  poured  so 
many  of  them  into  the  trunks. 

I  used  to  bury  Carlo  to  keep  him  safe  for  the 
winter.  Each  autumn,  the  day  before  we  left,  I 
put  him  on  a  certain  ledge  of  a  great  bowlder  called 
"The  Castle  Rock,"  just  on  the  edge  of  the  Downs 
a  few  feet  from  the  shore,  a  ledge  where  I  used  to 
play  for  hours.  It  was  Una  Mary's  Sea  Castle, 
and  deep  under  the  moss,  in  a  dark  crevice,  I  hid 
Carlo  and  two  other  "best  stones"  to  keep  him 
company. 

The  third  summer  was  our  last  at  Gloucester, 
but  on  a  day  not  long  ago  I  motored  there,  and  as 
the  rest  of  the  party  walked  on  the  beach  I  went 
to  the  Rock,  felt  back  in  the  crevice,  and  there  were 
my  stones,  still  safely  hidden.  Carlo  was  smaller 
than  I  remembered  him  to  be.  I  carefully  put 
them  back,  covered  them  up  again,  and  there  they 
probably  are  now — meaningless  pebbles  to  any  one 
else,  but  to  me  symbols  of  the  joy  of  three  whole 
summers. 


138  UNA  MARY 

I  used  to  feed  them  on  morsels  of  pale-pink  and 
vivid-green  seaweed  served  on  dishes  of  flat  gray 
and  orange  colored  lichens,  and  they  drank  from 
the  moss  that  grows  in  tiny  goblets  of  green  with 
a  rim  of  scarlet.  These  dishes  were  obligingly  na 
tive  to  rocky  shelves  of  my  Castle — a  fairies' 
pantry.  They  slept  on  rugs  of  soft,  dark  velvet 
moss.  I  can  see  Carlo  still — he  lay  down  in  such 
a  proud  way,  his  collar  showing  plainly. 

The  pools  in  the  rocks  at  low  tide  were  another 
world  of  enchantment  to  me.  There  were  splendid 
ones  in  the  cliffs  on  the  open  ocean  side,  where 
during  a  storm  the  surf  used  to  dash  as  high  as  a 
house. 

The  best  pools  were  difficult  to  reach  across 
the  slippery,  kelp-grown  rocks.  Everything  at  low 
tide  was  covered  deep  in  kelp  and  it  dipped  down 
into  the  pools  on  all  sides  like  a  fringe  that  swayed 
gently  on  top  of  the  water;  and  it  was  when  one 
parted  this  to  see  the  shadowed  rock  below  that 
one  found  the  marveis  of  starfish  pulling  them 
selves  about  on  the  rich  purple-brown  of  the  stones 
or  on  the  kelp  leaves,  their  stars  all  skewed  out 
of  shape  as  they  moved.  Near  them  were  whole 
plantations  of  sea-anemones;  some  tight  shut,  look 
ing  like  wizened,  brown,  baked  apples,  some  with 
their  delicate,  swaying  flowers  fully  open,  lovely, 
impalpable  rosettes. 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  139 

There  were  creeping,  living  shells — blue,  white, 
brown,  and  brightest  yellow — carrying  their  houses 
on  their  backs,  or  an  empty  shell  house  rented  for 
the  season  by  a  pretentious  hermit-crab,  and  some 
times  a  large,  dark,  blotchy  lobster  looking  like 
the  ogre  of  an  enchanted  castle  in  that  world  of 
magic,  living  beauties.  Once  we  saw  two  lobsters 
fighting,  gripping  and  clutching  with  their  deadly 
front  claws  until  they  had  nearly  torn  each  other 
to  pieces.  But  it  was  all  unreal,  for,  instead  of  the 
crash  and  clatter  one  expected  as  of  knights  fight 
ing  in  coats  of  mail,  it  was  all  silent  under  the 
water  and  scarcely  a  ripple  swayed  the  surface. 
There  were  spiny  sea-urchins,  hedgehogs  of  thd 
sea,  with  their  beautifully  patterned  mouths  like\ 
closed  starflowers  cut  in  stone;  and,  best  of  all, 
now  and  then  would  come  a  day  when  we  found  a 
prisoned  jellyfish — the  enchanted  Princess  of  it 
all,  Spirit  of  Water,  made  barely  tangible  by  the 
flower-shaped,  opaque  figure  on  its  back,  irides 
cent,  of  many  colors,  with  long,  floating  tentacles 
and  streamers  beneath  the  slowly  undulating  scal 
lops  of  its  disk.  Then  there  were  the  marvels  of 
sea-weed  growing  in  the  pool  or  floating,  left  there 
by  the  tide. 

At  our  hotel  one  summer  there  was  a  German 
professor  who  was  collecting  seaweeds,  and  he  al 
ways  took  me  with  him,  as  I  was  better  at  getting 


140  UNA  MARY 

down  to  the  pools  than  he  and  lucky  in  my  finds. 
I  am  very  grateful  to  him  and,  though  all  I  remem 
ber  is  a  beaming  kindliness  bounded  by  spectacles 
and  a  brown  beard,  he  is  still  one  of  my  dear  mem 
ories,  we  were  so  sympathetic  about  the  magic 
pools,  and  without  him  I  should  not  have  been 
allowed  to  explore  them  as  I  did.  On  rainy  days 
we  mounted  our  seaweeds,  and  he  used  to  fill  in 
the  spare  moments  as  we  waited  for  the  cards  to 
dry  by  reading  aloud  to  me  from  "Fin,  Feathers, 
and  Fur,"  a  book  my  father  had  given  to  me, 
stories  about  the  creatures  we  found  in  the  sea- 
pools,  or  from  a  book  of  his  own  on  Natural  His 
tory,  which  was  as  delightfully  expanded  as  Izaak 
Walton  in  having  an  appendix  which  gave  vari 
ous  recipes  for  cooking,  not  fish  this  time,  but 
shell-fish  and  sea-urchins.  We  tried  the  sea-urchins 
X  boiled,  as  the  Greeks  liked  them  best — so  the  book 

said — eating  them  out  of  the  shells,  seasoned  with 
vinegar,  pepper,  and  salt,  and  found  them  so  pecu 
liarly  horrible  that  I  have  never  dared  try  cooking 
fish  in  the  ways  recommended  by  "The  Gentle 
3*  Angler."  I  could  not  bear  another  such  disillu 
sionment. 

In  the  course  of  our  explorations  along  the  cliffs 
we  even  found  two  sea  caves  where  the  surf  thun 
dered  and  spouted  as  the  tide  rushed  in;  one  we 
called  the  Spouting  Whale,  for  the  Professor  told 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  141 

me  whales  threw  up  fountains  of  spray  in  the  same 
way.  He  had  seen  them  from  the  steamer  as  he 
came  over  to  America.  I  longed  to  see  one  do  it, 
too.  I  had  seen  a  whale  in  the  flesh,  but  it  was 
dead  on  the  beach,  where  it  had  been  washed  dur 
ing  a  storm,  a  vast  mountain  of  horrible,  fishy 
stench,  so  large  it  had  taken  the  combined  efforts  of 
all  the  town  and  ten  bonfires  lit  on  all  sides  to  de 
stroy  it.  Now  I  longed  to  see  one  alive,  proud  as  a 
ship  at  sea,  playfully  tossing  a  shock  of  foam 
against  the  sky.  I  was  so  surprised  when  I  first 
saw  a  whale  years  later  to  find  that  he  did  not 
roar  with  the  sound  of  the  sea  cave  as  he  spouted. 
Our  richest  finds  were  all  in  certain  large  pools, 
only  uncovered  for  a  short  time  at  the  lowest  ebb 
of  low  tide,  and  always,  as  we  leaned  over  shoulder- 
deep  in  the  cool  water,  reaching  with  a  stick  for  the 
long,  floating  wisps  of  seaweed,  which  turned  into 
damp  sops  of  dull  nothingness  as  we  lifted  them 
into  the  air,  we  had  to  keep  one  eye  on  the  shining 
sea,  a  dancing  line  of  blue  against  the  sky,  with  its 
inconsequent  ripples  creeping  nearer  and  nearer,  to 
be  noticed  first  in  the  gradual  growing  and  swelling 
of  the  pools  as  little  trickles  pushed  their  way  surely 
and  imperceptibly  under  the  surface  of  the  kelp 
until  it  all  began  to  rock  on  unseen  waters.  Then 
came  the  mad  scramble  to  reach  the  "Neck" 
before  we  were  cut  off  from  the  shore,  as  these 


142  UNA  MARY 

best  pools  were  on  a  headland  that  became  an 
island  at  high  tide.  Often  we  had  delayed  a  mo 
ment  too  long  and  had  to  wade  knee-deep  along 
a  narrow  strip  of  water  to  the  beach. 

Then  came  the  joys  of  the  walk  home  across 
"The  Down  of  the  Forty  Caves."  It  is  now  dot 
ted  with  summer  cottages,  I  hear,  their  foundations 
probably  built  from  the  rocks  of  my  caves,  but 
when  I  knew  it,  a  wild  confusion  of  bowlders  piled 
and  tumbled  as  if  tossed  there  by  the  sea,  with 
wind-blown,  stunted  oak  and  pine  trees  clutching 
a  foothold  among  them,  and  billowing  reaches  of 
huckleberry,  bayberry,  and  wild  rose-bushes  all 
gay  with  pink  and  white  flowers  in  summer  and 
gaudy  with  the  reds  and  yellows  of  leaves,  golden- 
rod,  and  the  purple  of  asters  in  autumn,  thrown 
into  relief  by  the  always  vivid  green  of  the  bay 
bushes,  for  we  never  stayed  late  enough  to  see 
them  turn. 

Against  the  sky  on  the  land  side  of  the  Cape 
were  the  church  spires  and  roofs  of  Gloucester, 
fronted  by  the  ever-present  masts  of  the  fishing 
fleet;  on  the  other  three  sides,  the  giddy,  wavering 
line  of  dark-blue  sea  against  the  sky. 

Vivid,  splendid  days  of  warm,  sea-swept  breezes 
sweet  with  bay-leaves  aromatic  in  the  sun;  days 
when  I  wandered  with  the  Professor  or  all  alone, 
but  never  lonely,  for  Edward  was  always  with  me, 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  143 

along  the  sheep  paths  through  the  Downs,  the 
bushes  higher  than  my  head  in  places  where  I 
pushed  through  gnarled  and  knotted  growths  like 
miniature  forests  drawn  by  Dore,  through  boggy 
hollows  where  the  Venus  fly-catch  and  exquisite 
orchids  greeted  me,  lovely  in  their  delicate  distinc 
tion,  haunted  presences  among  the  flowers,  or  the 
pitcher-plant  held  up  her  crown  of  brimming  cups. 
All  touched  with  a  magic  of  My  Country  were  those 
paths  across  the  Downs,  which  became  intensified 
when  I  reached  the  rocks. 

The  wild  central  ridge  of  the  Cape  was  flung 
together  in  such  gaunt  confusion  that  there  were 
great  crevices  among  the  rocks — forty  we  found  in 
all,  ranging  in  size  from  cracks  just  large  enough 
fcfr  me  to  squeeze  in  my  small  body,  but  still  caves 
because  I  could  get  inside  them,  up  to  two  caves, 
each  large  enough  for  a  grown  person  to  stand  up 
straight. 

There  was  one  deep,  narrow  crack  that  we  could 
only  look  into  from  above.  My  sister's  doll,  Je 
mima,  fell  down  into  it  one  day,  and  there  she 
may  still  be,  alone  in  the  blackness  of  its  depths. 
We  tried  fishing  for  her  with  a  hook  and  line,  but 
could  not  catch  her,  so  all  we  could  do  was  to 
mark  the  place  as  her  grave  by  putting  up  a  white 
stone  at  the  mouth  of  the  crevice,  on  which  we 
wrote: 


i44  UNA  MARY 

"Jemima,  aged  two  years. 
Her  bocj^  rests  below." 

How  stupid  it  seems  to  blast  those  rocks  and  use 
them  for  foundations,  treating  them  as  if  they  were 
just  common  stone  instead  of  Una  Mary's  magic 
forty  caves! 

Perhaps  they  found  Jemima! 

Jt  was  at  Gloucester  that  I  had  one  of  the  most 
painful  experiences  of  my  life,  one  from  which  I 
never  wholly  recovered. 

Besides  the  Professor,  I  had  another  grown-up 
friend  with  whom  I  used  to  play  on  the  shore.  We 
drew  pictures  in  the  sand  together  and  he  helped 
me  hunt  for  shells  and  stones.  I  gave  him  one  of 
my  best  dog  stones,  named  Patsy.  He  was  a  very 
brilliant  and  fascinating  man  whose  family  had 
been  old  friends  of  my  mother,  so  he  rather  joined 
our  party.  I  was  told  to  be  very  nice  to  him  as 
he  had  been  ill  and  was  trying  to  get  well.  I  know 
he  used  to  lie  for  hours  on  the  sand  basking  in  the 
sunshine,  and  there  I  used  to  lie  beside  him,  talking 
to  him  as  I  had  to  no  one  else,  for  it  was  almost 
Una  Mary  who  talked  to  him,  as  he  knew  all  the 
places  that  she  loved  and  he,  too,  lived  in  castles 
in  a  fair,  enchanted  country.  No  one  had  ever 
come  so  close  to  me  as  he,  and  with  all  Una  Mary's 
dumb,  pent-up  affection  I  adored  him. 

Then  one  day  he  disappeared — "went  to  town," 


/ 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  145 

we  heard,  but  without  saying  a  word  about  it  to 
any  one — and  my  mother  and  his  brother  for  some 
reason  were  greatly  worried  about  him.  The  next 
morning  I  had  gotten  up  early  and  was  sitting 
quite  alone  on  the  piazza  of  the  hotel  when  a 
closed  carriage  drove  up,  and  out  of  it  two  men 
helped  my  friend — that  is,  it  was  the  human  body 
of  my  friend,  alive,  but  possessed  of  some  terrible 
repellent  demon  that  was  not  himself  at  all.  The 
man  I  had  known,  all  sweetness  and  gentle, 
swift  perceptions,  was  transformed  to  a  truculent, 
swearing  bully  with  an  insane,  hiccoughing  laugh. 
The  two  men  who  had  brought  him  hurried  him 
into  the  house  between  them,  and  I  was  the  only 
person  who  saw.  I  had  no  idea  then  what  the 
matter  was,  and  I  was  too  profoundly  shocked  by 
what  I  had  seen  to  speak  of  it  to  any  one. 

I  crept  away  by  myself  to  the  Downs  to  think 
out  the  dreadful  discovery  I  had  made.  Here  was 
the  man  I  had  known  and  loved  suddenly  become 
the  most  repulsive  and  awful  creature  I  had  ever 
seen.  Which  was  the  real  person?  For  a  long 
time  I  had  thought  all  people  had  Una  Mary 
selves  inside  them,  and,  as  I  knew  Una  Mary  was 
really  much  better  and  finer  than  Una,  so  I  had 
supposed  that  other  people's  inner  selves  must  be 
their  best  selves,  the  selves  they  really  were.  Now 
here  was  an  inner  self,  coming  out  where  I  could 


146  UNA  MARY 

see  it,  in  a  man  whose  outside  self  was  all  that 
I  could  love,  and  it  was  frightful — the  inner  self 
seemed  all  that  was  most  horrible.  Was  that  his 
real  self?  The  foundation  of  everything  rocked 
under  me,  for  if  people  inside  might  be  worse  in 
stead  of  better  than  they  were  outside,  what  could 
one  rely  upoji,  whom  could  one  really  trust? 

.  It  was  a  |&thetic  little  Una  Mary  with  a  bruised 
and  battered  brain  and  heart  who  came  back  from 
that  struggle  in  the  Downs,  came  back  to  a  world 
of  people  she  knew  but  all  of  whom  had  changed, 
seen  through  this  murky  veil  of  new  suspicion. 
Were  their  inner  selves  black  and  wicked,  too? 

Mamma  said  my  friend  was  ill,  and  he  did  not 
appear  until  the  next  day,  when  he  came  down 
looking  pale  and  shaky.  As  soon  as  he  saw  me  he 
at  once  came  to  where  I  stood  and  stooped  over 
to  kiss  me.  Instinctively  I  put  up  both  hands  to 
shield  my  face  and  rushed  away  from  him  crying 
as  if  my  heart  were  broken,  for  suddenly  I  knew 
that  I  should  die  if  he  touched  me.  I  could  not, 
could  not  bear  it,  for  I  felt  it  would  be  not  the 
man  he  seemed  but  that  other  repulsive  creature 
I  had  seen  who  would  really  be  the  one  who  kissed 
me.  The  fierce,  relentless  cruelty  of  children!  In 
a  flash  the  man  understood  me.  It  cut  him  to  the 
quick,  but  he  never  drank  again  that  summer  and 
he  never  tried  again  to  kiss  me,  and  while  I  avoided 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  147 

him  I  suffered  inexpressibly,  and  still  suffer,  for 
each  time  I  see  a  drunken  man  that  old  horror 
comes  over  me  and  that  terrible  question,  \V\at 
is  his  real  self? 

The  day  we  left,  as  I  saw  him  lying  on  the  sand 
without  even  attempting  to  say  good-by  to  me, 
I  could  bear  it  no  longer.  All  my  old  affection  for 
him  flooded  through  me,  and  I  ran,  flung  my  arms 
round  him,  and  kissed  him,  saying:  "I  know  this 
is  the  Real  You,  isn't  it?  "  He  held  me  tightly  for 
a  moment,  then  he  took  both  of  my  hands  and, 
looking  at  me  with  hurt  eyes  full  of  pain  and  terri 
ble  earnestness,  said:  "With  God's  help,  this  shall 
be  the  Real  Me  always." 

I  never  saw  him  again.  A  short  time  ago  he 
died,  and  among  his  papers  they  found  a  wonderful 
poem.  I  read  it  in  a  magazine.  It  was  written 
by  his  "Real  Self,"  the  man  Una  Mary  had  adored, 
and  could  only  have  been  written  by  one  who  had 
b§en  down  to  the  depths  and  risen  from  there 
shining,  strong,  and  free. 

I  think  I  must  have  played  alone  a  great  deal 
during  those  seashore  summers,  for  besides  my 
small  sisters  and  their  nurse  I  remember  only  my 
two  grown  friends  and  the  fifteen-year-old  daughter 
of  the  proprietor  of  the  hotel,  a  tall,  lanky  girl 
named  Nellie. 

I  seem  to  see  her  in  the  background  a  great  deal, 


148  UNA  MARY 

reading  novels.  She  read  me  bits  from  one  called 
"Lady — somebody  or  other's — Jewels."  The  only 
thing  about  it  that  I  vividly  remember  is  that  the 
heroine  was  carried  away  drugged,  lying  in  a  coffin, 
passed  off  as  dead,  by  a  dark-haired  young  man 
who  had  some  mysterious  designs  upon  her.  Then 
there  was  a  fair-haired  young  man  who  was  de 
voted  to  his  mother,  who  seemed  to  want  the  hero 
ine  also,  and  who  always  appeared  at  the  last  criti- 
cal  moment  to  rescue  her.  He  got  her  out  of  the 
coffin  somehow  and  took  her  to  his  mother,  who 
was  always  ready  to  welcome  her  with  open  arms, 
only  to  have  her  snatched  out  of  them  again.  He 
finally  fought  a  duel  in  which  he  killed  the  dark- 
haired  man,  which  seemed  to  me  a  pity,  though 
Nellie  said  "Thanks  be  to  gracious"  when  she  read 
that  part. 

To  me  it  was  all  gloriously  blood-curdling,  but 
to  Nellie  it  was  entirely  Love.  She  could,  and  did, 
talk  at  great  length  to  me  on  Love,  and  thought 
she  had  felt  it  for  the  head  waiter,  but  he,  dull 
creature,  was  evidently  born  without  the  true  ro 
mantic  soul,  for  he  threw  himself  away  and  mar 
ried  the  cook,  a  blow  under  which  Nellie  bore  up 
nobly,  supported  by  the  conviction  that  one  day 
a  man  would  come  who  would  gladly  risk  all  for 
her  lightest  wish. 

It  seemed  to  me  a  magnificent  idea,  and  I,  too, 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  149 

decided  to  Love,  only  I  felt  it  would  be  more 
exciting  to  be  myself  the  person  who  risked 
everything — the  other  role  seemed  too  passive. 
And  when  I  asked  Nellie  about  it  she  thought  a 
woman  could  have  that  kind  of  love  as  well  as  a 
man  if  I  really  wanted  it. 

There  was  a  dreamy,  dark-haired  young  painter, 
Mr.  Phillips,  staying  at  the  hotel.  He  looked,  in 
fact,  a  good  deal  like  my  friend  Edward-Christ, 
and  I  decided  he  was  the  person  for  whom  I  could 
risk  all.  My  only  difficulty  lay  in  lack  of  oppor 
tunity.  His  existence,  on  the  surface,  at  least, 
seemed  absolutely  peaceful  and  secure. 

I  used  to  follow  him  when  he  went  out  sketching, 
and  sit  quite  silent  on  the  ground  beside  his  easel 
as  he  painted,  hoping  that  the  great  adventure 
would  arrive.  It  was  Una  Mary  who  sat  there,  her 
heart  big  with  courage  and  an  ingenuity  to  meet 
and  overcome  all  the  dangers  which  even  she  could 
imagine.  But  dangers  never  came  to  that  peace 
ful,  sunny  beach,  so  the  artist  never  knew  that  I 
was  trying  to  be  his  Romantic  Lover.  Instead, 
he  used  me  as  a  model  and  painted  me  in  several 
of  his  pictures,  a  thin  mite,  for  this  was  my  "little- 
lanky-  to whead"  period,  dressed  in  blue  or  scarlet 
cotton,  sitting  with  my  hands  clasped  round  my 
knees. 

He  painted  beaches  with  rocks  and  dories  drawn 


150  UNA  MARY 

up  among  them,  and  the  sea  beyond,  and  I,  in 
watching  him,  unconsciously  learned  a  good  deal 
about  the  mysteries  of  art,  learned  that  pictures 
could  be  dauby  and  slight  and  yet  seem  real  and 
quivering  with  sunlight.  It  was  an  upsetting 
knowledge,  and  I  began  to  respect  the  paintings 
of  heads  in  our  parlor  at  home,  for  he  could  paint 
me  without  my  features  at  all — just  three  or  four 
dabs  of  yellow,  red,  and  blue,  and  yet  I  knew  it 
looked  exactly  like  Una.  You  could  not  mistake 
it  for  any  one  else.  Color  seemed  like  words. 
You  could  describe  a  person  in  three  or  four  words 
if  you  hit  upon  the  right  ones;  so,  if  you  mixed 
exactly  the  right  notes  of  color,  that  also  seemed 
enough.  A  few  dabs  did  it,  and  there  I  sat  on  the 
painted  beach. 

One  day  he  gave  me  a  piece  of  paper  and  some 
paints,  not  the  gritty  cakes  I  had  in  my  own  box, 
which  were  so  dry  they  only  came  off  in  the  palest 
watery  tints  after  endless  scrubbing  with  the  brush, 
but  real  artist  paints  that  squeezed  out  of  tubes 
in  luscious,  soft  gobs  of  color,  when  I  could  fill  my 
brush  with  a  touch  and  really  let  myself  go  in  an 
absolute  delirium  of  color.  It  was  autumn  then, 
and  trailing  over  a  wall  near  where  I  sat  was  a 
spray  of  scarlet  woodbine  with  blue  berries,  and 
this  I  painted.  There  was  a  worm-hole  in  one  leaf 
which  I  copied  most  realistically,  I  remember,  but 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  151 

in  spite  of  that  my  artist  was  really  surprised  and 
interested  by  my  efforts,  which  pleased  me  greatly 
and  made  me  feel  that  I  had  done  something  for 
him  after  all,  even  if  I  had  not  been  killed  at  his 
feet  and  heard  him  say  as  I  died:  "How  she  must 
have  loved  me  to  have  done  this  for  my  sake!" 
That  was  what  they  said  in  Nellie's  books,  and  I 
only  hoped  he  knew  about  it  so  that  he  would  be 
able  to  say  it  if  the  great  moment  did  come.  He 
took  the  painting  to  my  mother  and  told  her  that 
I  must  be  given  drawing  lessons,  as  he  was  sure 
I  should  be  an  artist  when  I  grew  up. 

Mamma  has  it  still,  that  painting  of  woodbine. 
I  saw  it  the  other  day,  pasted  into  a  scrap-book  of 
our  early  attempts  at  art.  The  book  begins  with 
my  very  first  painting,  done  when  I  was  fif^  years 
old.  I  had  drawn  ever  since  I  could  hold  a  pencil, 
doing  outlines  of  men  absolutely  staggering  under 
tall  hats  many  sizes  too  large  for  their  bodies, 
which  seemed  to  be  kept  together  only  by  the  rows 
and  rows  of  buttons  that  adorned  them  from  their 
necks  to  their  heels,  or  pictures  of  ladies  with  mops 
of  corkscrew  curls  above  stiff,  triangular  trains. 
But  this  first  painting  was  made  with  my  origi 
nal  paint-box,  given  me  by  Agnes  for  a  Christ 
mas  present.  It  is  the  scene  from  the  study  win 
dow  during  a  snow-storm.  There,  black  against 
a  gray  sky,  are  the  church  tower  and  my  apple- 


iS2  UNA  MARY 

tree  with  a  sparrow  sitting  on  one  of  its  branches, 
and  snowflakes !  great,  splashing,  single  flakes  larger 
than  the  sparrow,  put  on  generously  with  Chinese 
white,  for  of  course  it  was  the  snow  that  I  was 
painting;  the  rest  was  wholly  its  background. 

My  bent  showed  even  then,  for  it  has  always 
been  landscape  I  have  wanted  to  paint;  and, 
though  it  was  the  snow  I  was  trying  for  then — snow 
against  the  sky — I  felt  the  necessity  of  giving  it  a 
background,  a  world  to  exist  in.  I  think  I  never 
drew  or  painted  the  detached,  suspended-in-space 
subjects  of  most  children's  art.  There  was  always 
at  least  a  horizon  line;  or,  if  it  were  a  flower  or 
a  figure  I  drew,  I  invariably  put  in  its  shadow. 
Nothing  ever  seemed  complete  without  a  shadow. 

After  the  painting  of  woodbine  I  was  given  bet 
ter  materials.  Some  of  them  were  given  to  me  by 
Mr.  Phillips,  and  when  we  got  back  to  town  I  was 
sent  to  a  drawing  class.  Harry  and  I  both  went; 
but,  while  I  took  a  real  interest  in  doing  studies  of 
still  life  in  charcoal  because  of  the  shadows,  he 
cared  only  about  scribbling  steam-engines  and 
trains  on  the  margin  of  his  paper.  It  was  at  home 
that  we  really  let  ourselves  go  in  art.  We  were 
very  strong  on  paintings  of  fruit,  especially  bunches 
of  cherries  with  a  white  place  left  on  the  red  for 
the  high  light.  Our  sunsets  were  very  gorgeous. 
My  specialty  was  stage-coaches,  the  old-fashioned 


SUMMERS  BY  THE  SEA  153 

four-horse  kind  we  had  ridden  on  in  the  mountains. 
I  also  made  them  in  cardboard  with  wheels  that 
really  turned  and  thread  reins  connecting  the 
six  galloping  horses — my  horses  always  had  all 
four  feet  off  the  ground  at  once,  their  speed  was 
so  terrific,  like  the  horse  ridden  by  Mr.  Obadiah 
Oldbuck. 

But  to  return  to  my  first  love-affair.  When  My 
Artist  said  good-by  to  me  that  autumn  he  added 
that  he  knew  he  should  hear  of  me  some  day  as  a 
fellow  painter,  and  I  quite  gravely  promised  that 
he  should  and  for  years  painted  with  that  promise 
in  my  mind. 

When  we  were  living  in  Washington  a  plumber 
came  one  day  to  fix  the  kitchen  boiler,  and  he 
looked  so  like  Mr.  Phillips  that  I  was  sure  it  must 
be  he ;  and  after  watching  him  work  for  some  time — 
soldering  with  bright  lead  heated  in  a  portable 
charcoal  stove  seemed  an  even,  more  noble  and  en 
trancing  operation  than  painting — I  asked  him  if 
he  were  not  Mr.  Phillips;  but  he  said  no,  his  name 
was  Mike  Dulen.  I  was  fearfully  disappointed 
but  politely  answered:  "I  beg  your  pardon,  I 
thought  you  might  be  Mr.  Phillips  come  to  see  me 
in  disguise."  Later,  in  talking  it  over  with  the 
cook,  the  plumber's  comment  was:  "Begorra,  I  felt 
as  lonesome  as  me  first  communion,  she  looked  that 
disappointed  at  me  bein'  no  wun  but  meself.'' 


CHAPTER  X 
MAMMY 

TI7"HEN  I  was  nine  years  old  my  family  moved 
*  *  to  Washington,  and  there  I  lived  until  I 
grew  up,  a  change  of  environment  that  did  a  great 
deal  for  Una  Mary  in  giving  her  a  broader  horizon. 
As  soon  as  we  reached  Washington  a  colored 
nurse  was  engaged  for  us — Mammy.  We  are  still 
her  "family,"  and  she  works  for  us  intermittently  as 
the  mood  seizes  her,  dividing  her  loyalty  between 
my  mother  and  a  convent  of  Roman  Catholic  nuns. 
She  was  so  black  that  when  she  first  gave  me  a 
bath  I  rubbed  my  wet  hand  on  hers,  sure  the  color 
would  come  off.  She  was  the  old-fashioned  kind 
of  nurse,  a  real  Mammy,  and  to  please  her  I 
changed  the  counting-out  rhyme  we  had  used  in 
Cincinnati: 

"Eeny,  meeny,  miney,  mo, 
Catch  a  nigger  by  the  toe. 
If  he  hollers  let  him  go, 
Eeny,  meeny,  miney,  mo." 

Mammy  said  there  were  no  niggers  since  the  War, 
only  "colored  pussons,"  so  I  changed  that  line  to: 

154 


MAMMY  155 

"Catch  a  fellow  by  the  toe." 

She  herself  had  been  a  slave,  born  on  a  planta 
tion  down  South  and  brought  up  in  the  "  Before 
the  War"  atmosphere,  with  all  its  typical  affection, 
superstition,  and  plantation  songs  and  stories. 

"Oh,  dem  golden  shoes! 
Oh,  dem  silver  slippers! 
We's  all  a  gwine  to  wear  dem 
Walkin'  in  the  streets  ob  gold," 

is  a  verse  I  remember  from  one  song.  Instead  of 
lacing  boots  of  calf,  how  those  gold  and  silver  slip 
pers  did  appeal  to  me! 

She  told  me  stories  about  animals,  the  very  ones 
that  have  been  collected  as  " Uncle  Remus,"  and 
there  were  many  others  I  have  never  seen  published. 
She  had  always  heard  them  as  a  child  down  on  the 
Plantation,  and  there  were  also  stories  of  the  Saints, 
as  she  was  a  Roman  Catholic. 

When  we  first  arrived  in  the  city  we  went  to  a 
boarding-house  kept  by  a  Southern  lady,  and  at 
the  table  were  several  typical  politicians,  the  first 
ones  I  had  ever  seen  in  the  flesh  and  less  super 
human  than  I  had  been  led  to  suppose  from  Pat's 
descriptions  of  them.  Two  of  them  were  Congress 
men,  and  when  I  inquired  for  their  roosters,  as  I 
had  seen  none  about,  they  replied  with  a  laugh 
that  they  were  Republicans  at  that  table  and  did 
not  need  roosters  to  do  their  crowing  for  them. 


156  UNA  MARY 

I  lost  all  interest  in  them  after  that  and  was 
secretly  relieved,  for  surely  Democratic  Congress 
men  would  be  more  what  Pat  had  painted  them 
to  be,  probably  glorified  versions  of  the  "Colonel," 
for  at  the  house  there  was  also  the  traditional 
Southern  Colonel,  a  Democrat  and,  as  I  now  sus 
pect,  a  professional  lobbyist.  But  at  that  time 
he  impressed  me  greatly  with  his  thick,  white  hair, 
bushy  eyebrows,  frock  coat,  soft  hat,  and  flamboy 
ant  collar.  His  manners  were  so  elegant  that  he 
always  addressed  my  father  as  "Sir,"  even  after 
I  had  assured  him  that  we  had  no  title  in  the 
family,  and  he  called  me  "Miss  Una."  I  felt  really 
solemn  over  that  and  was  glad  Mamma  had  let 
my  hair  begin  to  grow.  It  had  already  reached  the 
round-comb  length. 

I  often  used  to  see  the  Colonel  afterward  sitting 
on  a  bench  in  the  Park  smoking  a  cigar,  the  curling 
smoke  seeming  a  fitting  atmosphere  for  his  genial, 
expansive  leisure.  He  habitually  wore  a  carnation 
in  his  buttonhole,  and  when  we  met  he  always 
took  it  out  and  gallantly  pinned  it  to  my  coat, 
kissing  my  hand  when  he  had  done  so,  just  as  if  I 
were  really  the  Princess  Una  Mary.  His  ivory- 
headed  cane,  disguised  as  a  riding  horse,  was  always 
at  the  command  of  my  two  sisters.  Mammy 
highly  approved  of  him,  and  we  were  allowed  to 
talk  to  him  as  much  as  we  liked,  though  most  of 


MAMMY  157 

the  other  people  in  the  Park  whom  I  thought 
looked  nice  we  were  kept  severely  away  from  by 
Mammy's  sniff  of  "Huh,  dat's  no  quality.  Dat's 
jest  po'  white  trash."  I  was  always  abashed  by 
these  social  mistakes  and  finally  decided  it  was 
like  my  inability  to  hear  omens  spoken  by  the 
Sacred  Tree — I  evidently  also  lacked  the  instinct 
to  recognize  "quality." 

v  After  several  weeks  of  hunting,  a  house  was  de 
cided  upon  and  in  we  moved.  I  disliked  the  house 
for  itself,  and  it  gave  me  a  most  forlorn,  homesick 
feeling  to  see  the  Cincinnati  furniture  arranged  dif 
ferently  in  rooms  that  it  had  never  seen  before.  It 
must  all  feel  so  lost.  Things  that  had  been  side 
by  side  for  all  those  years  were,  some  of  them,  sep 
arated  by  the  length  of  a  room  or  banished  to  a 
different  part  of  the  house.  All  the  social  relation 
ships  were  broken  up.  It  was  as  drastic  as  the 
French  Revolution.  The  only  spot  that  remained 
impregnable  was  the  dining-room.  The  furniture 
there  could  not  be  shifted  about.  It  all  belonged 
together.  And  for  the  first  two  or  three  weeks  the 
dining-room  was  my  one  refuge,  the  only  room 
where  Una  Mary  felt  at  home.  There  I  used  to 
stay  cramped  under  the  velvet  cloth  that  covered 
the  table  between  meals — it  was  my  paladin's  tent 
— and  make  up  stories  inspired  by  the  little  chinks 
of  firelight  which  shone  through  the  mica  front  of 


1 58  UNA  MARY 

the  Latrobe  below  the  black-marble  mantelpiece. 
That  fire  was  in  turn  my  setting  sun,  setting  in  a 
bank  of  dark  clouds — the  fire  where  I  burned  my 
witches  and  later  the  heart  of  the  Inferno,  with 
eager,  glowing  Imps  and  once  the  Devil  himself 
busy  among  the  coals. 

The  one  joy  of  the  house  was  the  back  yard, 
and  here,  in  a  shady  corner,  we  made  a  wild-flower 
garden,  for  Washington  was  then  so  small  that  we 
could  easily  walk,  even  wheeling  the  baby  carriage, 
into  the  real  country,  where  we  could  pick  wild 
flowers  and  dig  up  plants  for  our  gardens — we  each 
had  our  own,  my  sister  and  I.  I  planted  yellow 
and  white  violets  in  mine  as  well  as  blue  ones  and 
lady's-slippers  and  bloodroot.  They  were  the 
great  glory  of  the  back  yard,  those  two  wild  gar 
dens,  with  the  high,  red-flowered  trumpet- vine  that 
draped  the  side  of  the  house  above  them.  There 
was  a  peach-tree,  too,  beside  them,  that  blossomed 
beautifully,  and  a  gourd  vine  grew  over  the  shed — 
the  pink  shed,  the  color  of  peach-blossoms,  on  the 
roof  of  which  one  could  bask  in  the  sun  and  enjoy 
a  commanding  view  of  all  the  other  back  yards  in 
the  block,  even  those  that  fronted  on  the  next 
street. 

It  was  in  one  of  these  that  I  discovered  my  future 
uncle,  the  man  who  soon  afterward  married  my 
aunt  and  was  always  one  of  my  greatest  admira- 


MAMMY  159 

tions.  When  I  first  saw  him  from  the  shed  roof 
he  was  sawing  a  board  in  his  yard,  and  on  his 
head,  instead  of  a  hat,  he  wore  a  red  Turkish  fez. 
I  had  never  seen  one  before  and  liked  it,  so  I  gave 
a  hail  to  the  wearer,  and  when  he  invited  me  over 
I  dropped  down  into  his  yard  and  helped  him  car 
penter  while  he  told  me  about  Morocco,  where  he 
had  recently  been  on  a  trip  around  the  world.  He 
was  a  geologist,  a  born  explorer,  and  I  loved  his 
stories  of  travel;  so  that  visit  was  the  beginning  of 
many  back-yard  calls.  One  day  I  cut  my  finger, 
and  he  brought  me  home  by  the  front  door  to  ex 
plain  to  my  mother;  so  the  family  began  to  know 
him,  and  very  soon  he  had  married  my  aunt  and 
belonged  to  us. 

It  took  a  great  deal  of  courage  to  jump  down  into 
the  black  gulf  of  the  alley  from  the  shed  roof.  A 
Real  Girl  once  spent  the  day  with  me,  and  to  show 
off  before  her  I  gathered  all  my  courage  together, 
shut  my  eyes,  and  jumped.  Then  I  dared  her  to 
follow.  She  was  afraid  but  refused  to  get  -down 
any  other  way;  so  for  two  hours  she  sat  weeping 
on  the  roof  until  I,  in  desperation,  told  her  that  I 
had  really  been  afraid  to  do  it  myself,  which  so 
cheered  her  that  she  jumped  off  at  once  quite  fear 
lessly. 

We  jumped  a  great  deal  when  we  were  out  walk 
ing  in  the  country,  and  my  uncle,  who  often  went 


1 66  UNA  MARY 

with  us,  told  us  never  to  be  afraid  to  jump  across 
a  hole  just  because  it  was  deep.  Depth  had  noth 
ing  to  do  with  the  question,  which  was  solely 
whether  or  not  it  was  too  far  across.  It  made  no 
difference  whether  it  was  one  foot  deep  or  twenty. 
This  struck  me  as  a  profound  maxim  for  the  whole 
of  life,  and  I  applied  it  so  logically  to  climbing  that 
one  night  I  appeared  at  a  third-story  window  of  my 
uncle's  house,  a  few  houses  away  from  ours,  having 
walked  along  the  copper  gutter  that  ran  the  length 
of  the  block.  The  whole  family  was  horrified,  but 
I  pointed  out  that  I  knew  I  could  walk  on  the  gut 
ter,  so  what  did  it  matter  how  high  up  it  was? 
But  my  uncle,  whom  I  had  badly  frightened,  sud 
denly  coming  like  a  ghost  out  of  the  night — he  was 
tying  a  necktie  in  front  of  the  mirror  and  saw  me 
reflected  in  it  as  I  balanced  on  the  sill — did  not  at 
all  agree  with  this  application  of  his  principle. 

Between  our  house  and  the  next  on  one  side 
there  was  a  space,  but  the  two  houses  were  con 
nected  by  a  sort  of  Bridge  of  Sighs  made  by  two 
large  wooden  closets  suspended  in  air.  One  opened 
off  my  room  and  the  other  belonged  to  the  next 
house,  with  a  nailed-up  door  between.  Why  they 
were  ever  built  I  do  not  know,  but  in  that  closet, 
hanging  over  space,  with  its  window  toward  our 
yard,  was  my  special  lair  and  here  I  always  played 
dolls. 


MAMMY  161 

I  had  no  friends  the  first  year  we  lived  in  Wash 
ington.  I  missed  Harry  dreadfully,  and,  as  my 
sisters  were  too  young  to  play  with,  my  mother 
still  ill  a  great  deal,  and  my  father  very  busy,  I 
was  thrown  back  upon  myself  more  than  ever,  and 
playing  with  dolls,  when  she  was  not  reading  or 
" pretending,"  became  Una  Mary's  absorbing  oc 
cupation. 

I  had  two  favorite  dolls,  Elizabeth  and  Isabella. 
Isabella  was  made  of  French  bisque  china,  as  it  was 
called,  jointed  at  the  shoulders  and  hips,  had  golden 
curls  and  eyes  that  shut.  She  was  given  to  me 
by  my  uncle-to-be  and  was  a  person  one  could 
dress  very  fashionably,  she  had  such  innate  style. 
I  made  her  the  most  ravishing  clothes,  the  sort  I 
should  have  liked  to  wear  myself. 

In  my  closet  there  was  an  old  Chinese  basket  as 
tall  as  I,  the  "Canton  Basket,"  brought  back  by 
some  sea-captain  ancestor,  and  in  it  were  kept  all 
the  pieces  of  cloth  that  were  too  large  to  go  into 
the  rag-bag,  and  any  of  these  I  was  allowed  to  cut 
up  for  dolls'  dresses.  I  had  to  stand  on  a  chair 
in  order  to  reach  down  into  the  basket,  and  there, 
perilously  tottering  on  a  very  rickety  one,  I  used 
to  dive  blissfully  down,  dragging  up  fascinating,  un 
expected  treasures,  bits  of  velvet,  silk,  lace,  or  mus 
lin  of  many  periods  and  patterns,  for  the  family 
since  the  days  of  my  grandmother  had  kept  their 


162  UNA  MARY 

"pieces"  in  the  Canton  Basket.  It  was  so  deep 
I  never  got  to  the  bottom  except  once.  Then  I 
leaned  over,  reaching  the  full  length  of  my  arm,  tug 
ging  at  an  end  of  apple-green  velvet  sprigged  with 
flowers,  lost  my  balance,  out  the  chair  jumped  from 
under  me,  and  into  the  basket  I  plunged  head  first, 
and  was  fished  out  by  the  legs  by  Mammy.  Later, 
when  I  made  my  own  instead  of  my  dolls'  clothes, 
I  went  to  the  basket  each  time  I  wanted  a  new 
blouse  or  trimming  for  a  hat,  until  one  of  my 
friends  said:  "That  basket  of  yours  must  be  as 
close-packed  as  the  box  Pandora  opened."  I  have 
never  liked  any  clothes  as  well  as  those  I  made 
from  scraps  from  the  Canton  Basket. 

My  other  favorite  doll,  Elizabeth,  was  bought 
one  Christmas  with  money  a  cousin  had  sent  me 
from  California — the  cousin  who  gave  me  my  Mi 
nerva  silver.  I  selected  her  myself.  She  had  a 
kid  body,  bisque  head  and  hands — one  finger  was 
gone  when  I  got  her — and  for  hair  there  was  pasted 
on  her  head  some  brownish  lamb's  wool.  She  was 
not  beautiful.  I  knew  that  quite  well.  And  she 
was  broken.  I  saw  that,  too,  and  pitied  her  ac 
cordingly;  and  no  amount  of  argument  on  the  part 
of  my  mother  and  aunt,  who  were  with  me,  could 
persuade  me  not  to  buy  her.  She  appealed  to 
something  deep  within  me  the  instant  I  saw  her 
lying  there  among  the  ringleted  blond  and  brown 


MAMMY  163 

haired  beauties.  She  was  as  unlike  a  Real  Doll  as 
I  was  unlike  a  Real  Girl;  so  we  simply  belonged 
together,  and  I  loved  her  better  than  I  did  all  the 
others,  even  more  than  I  did  my  Big  Doll  brought 
to  me  from  Paris,  who  was  the  size  of  a  real  child 
and  the  climax  of  all  that  Paris  could  achieve.  The 
Big  Doll  was  my  great  pride,  but  Elizabeth  was 
my  love. 

I  made  all  the  clothes  for  my  dolls  and  used  to 
sew  on  them  on  Sundays  quite  as  much  as  on  other 
days.  No  one  ever  told  me  not  to  until  Mammy 
came.  She  was  perfectly  horrified  and  told  me 
that  every  stitch  I  sewed  on  Sunday  I  should  have 
to  rip  out  with  my  teeth  when  I  got  to  Purgatory. 

She  drew  very  vivid  pictures  of  Purgatory,  a  place 
I  had  never  heard  of  before,  and  she  also  touched 
lightly  on  Hell,  a  place  she  scarcely  dared  to  men 
tion  above  her  breath,  but  which  to  me,  from  the 
little  she  did  say,  held  a  dreadful  sort  of  charm, 
with  the  same  fascination  I  found  in  an  old  book 
one  of  my  friends  had  discovered  in  her  attic, 
"The  Tortures  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition."  We 
used  to  read  it  by  the  hour,  hidden  under  the  cloth 
of  the  dining-table,  which  was  as  dungeon-like  a 
place  as  we  could  find.  From  Mammy  I  heard, 
too,  for  the  first  time  of  the  Devil,  the  King  of 
Purgatory  and  Hell.  He  came  to  me  as  quite  a 
new  and  delightful  personage.  I  am  sure  Mammy 


1 64  UNA  MARY 

loved  the  creeps  and  shudders  the  thought  of  him 
gave  her.  I  did,  and  would  have  felt  his  loss 
deeply  if  any  one  had  been  able  to  persuade  her 
that  he  was  not  real — I  felt  certain  my  Imp  must 
be  one  of  his  near  relations.  Her  description  of  the 
Devil  was  most  realistic  and  detailed.  I  met  him 
in  his  full  glory  of  horns,  hoofs  and  forked  tail, 
breathing  brimstone  and  fire,  running  over  the 
earth  eager  and  ingenious  to  create  mischief,  for 
it  was  mischief,  not  actual  malice,  that  seemed  his 
pleasure.  As  Mammy  described  him  it  was  really 
the  body  of  the  Devil  animated  by  the  spirit  of 
Puck.  Of  course,  he  was  likable  ami  at  the  same 
time  a  person  so  clever  that  it  was  a  real  triumph  to 
circumvent  him,  and  I  got  the  best  of  him  on  the 
subject  of  Sunday  sewing. 

I  had  tried  to  rip  out  stitches  with  my  teeth, 
thinking  I  would  learn  how  to  do  it  before  I  reached 
Purgatory,  but  found  it  was  quite  impossible.  Not 
one  stitch  could  I  start,  so  I  gave  up  sewing  on 
Sundays  until  Mamma  got  a  new  sewing-machine. 
It  was  a  Wilcox  and  Gibbs  chain-stitch,  the  kind  of 
machine  I  still  feel  all  really  nice  people  use,  for,  as 
my  mother  said:  "You  may  like  people  very  much, 
but  they  are  never  your  real  friends  unless  they 
have  had  that  machine  in  the  family."  I  have 
since  found  it  invariably  true,  and  with  it  has  usu 
ally  gone  Canton  china,  another  essential  part  of 


MAMMY  165 

the  background  of  the  thoroughly  well-brought-up. 
I  watched  Mamma  use  the  machine  and  tried  it 
myself,  and  found  I  could  run  it  quite  easily. 
Then  I  took  one  of  the  seams  I  had  sewed  and 
chewed  at  it  until  I  had  started  the  end,  when 
with  one  whiz  of  crinkled  thread  I  pulled  the  whole 
thing  out  with  my  teeth!  After  that  I  did  all  my 
Sunday  sewing  on  the  sewing-machine,  feeling  it 
would  only  be  an  added  pleasure  to  rip  it  out  in 
Purgatory,  and  with  a  deep  satisfaction  at  having 
gotten  the  best  of  the  Devil. 

Mammy  also  presented  to  me  the  quite  new  idea 
of  modesty.  I  had  only  heard  of  it  before  from  the 
two  old  ladies  in  the  country  who  still  secured  it 
for  themselves  by  wearing  hoops.  But  this  mod 
esty  of  Mammy's  was  different.  So  far  as  I  could 
gather,  it  displeased  the  Saints  and  the  Devil  to 
see  naked  little  girls,  and  they  could  see  them 
straight  through  the  walls  of  houses  everywhere 
except  in  bathrooms — they  seemed  to  have  no 
objection  to  baths — and  neither  could  they  see 
them  through  clothes.  So  I  learned  a  system  of 
dressing  and  undressing  under  the  tent-like  shelter 
of  my  petticoat,  a  garment  so  small  it  only  covered 
my  head,  but  I  had  the  optimism  of  the  ostrich  and 
felt  my  modesty  secured.  No  reason  was  given 
for  this  dislike  of  nakedness,  but  to  me  it  seemed 
quite  plausible,  remembering  my  old  idea  that 


i66  UNA  MARY 

Death  pulled  the  skeleton  out  through  a  piece  of 
bare  skin.  It  was  certainly  best  to  be  on  the  safe 
side! 

I  used  to  read  a  great  deal  to  myself.  My  fa 
vorite  book  now  was  Howard  Pyle's  "  Merry  Ad 
ventures  of  Robin  Hood."  I  lived  that,  winter 
and  summer,  and  in  the  life  of  My  Country,  Una 
Mary,  instead  of  being  a  Princess  in  Disguise, 
became  Ellen-a-Dale,  and  Edward  was  Little  John, 
while  the  Forest  of  Enchantment  needed  only  a 
change  of  name  to  be  ready  made  as  Sherwood 
Forest;  and  it  was  very  consoling  to  call  the  Imp 
the  Sheriff  of  Nottingham,  whom  everybody  com 
bined  to  torment. 

I  used  to  read  perched  on  the  arm  of  a  big  chair 
that  stood  in  the  bay  window  of  the  parlor,  screened 
from  the  rest  of  the  room  by  some  large  potted 
plants.  A  rubber-tree,  of  course,  was  among  them, 
an  inevitable  part  of  the  Boston  inheritance.  But 
the  gracious  lady  of  them  all — I  named  her  Rene 
— was  my  pink  oleander  tree,  my  very  own,  which 
I  had  raised  myself  from  a  small  slip  brought  me 
by  Aunt  Louisa,  an  old  colored  woman  who  worked 
for  us  and  "enjoyed  misery."  It  was  in  a  bottle, 
its  roots  just  starting,  when  she  gave  it  to  me.  I 
took  all  the  care  of  it  myself,  and  when  I  was  ten 
it  was  taller  than  I  and  had  twice  been  a  cascade 
of  pink  flowers.  How  Una  Mary  had  loved  it! 


MAMMY  167 

I  used  to  wash  and  stroke  the  glossy  leaves  and 
carry  single  flowers,  when  it  was  in  bloom,  to  deco 
rate  my  Altar  to  the  Virgin.  The  second  time  it 
blossomed  was  most  opportune,  for  Mamma  was 
going  to  have  a  party  and  the  President's  wife  was 
coming,  the  beautiful  young  White  House  bride — 
almost  a  real  Princess  she  seemed  to  me.  I  spent 
the  whole  afternoon  washing  each  leaf  of  the  ole 
ander  in  her  honor,  for  surely  I  felt  that  would  be 
the  first  thing  her  eyes  would  light  upon. 

The  whole  house  was  full  of  the  excitement  of 
preparation.  It  was  the  first  grown-up  party  we 
had  given.  The  kitchen  was  sticky  with  cake 
frosting  and  raisins.  All  the  morning  Mammy  and 
I  had  stoned  them,  assisted  by  the  baby,  who  got 
in  everybody's  way  but  was  called  "Pudden  en 
Plush"  through  it  all,  showing  the  state  of  amia 
bility  that  prevailed,  for  that  was  Mammy's  term 
of  highest  approbation. 

Then  after  an  early  supper  had  come  the  excite 
ment  of  dressing  Mamma.  Her  wavy  hair  was 
done  in  puffs  on  top  of  her  head,  and  she  wore  the 
heirloom  brocade,  the  family  splendor  that  had  first 
been  worn  at  a  ball  given  by  the  Empress  Joseph 
ine,  and  had  been  made  over  for  each  generation 
since.  My  grandmother  had  that  winter  sent  it 
on  to  Mamma  with  the  other  great  family  dress,  the 
pink  pina  that  was  brought  back  by  Perry's  expe- 


i68  UNA  MARY 

dition  to  Japan.  They  are  both  still  being  worn, 
these  dresses,  almost  as  immortal  as  old  lace.  I 
wish  we  had  pictures  of  them  in  their  various  in 
carnations.  It  would  be  a  history  of  fashions  for 
a  hundred  years.  They  are  charming  dresses  to 
wear.  They  are  so  full  of  the  ghosts  of  great  and 
gay  occasions,  one  seems  to  slip  on  the  happiness 
that  steeps  their  shining  folds. 

For  the  party  Mamma  had  the  brocade,  which 

was  itself  a  warm  old  ivory,  made  up  with  some 

green  velvet  and  the  lace  fichu  that  had  belonged 

to  a  famous  belle  of  my  great-grandmother's  day 

who  had  had,  so  tradition  said,  forty  proposals.     I 

^jiave  the  lace  now,  and  I  wish  it  might  whisper  to 

me  some  of  the  secrets  it  must  know.     It  is  such 

beautiful  lace  she  would  have  worn  it  on  many 

"of  the  occasions  when  she  proved  invincible! 

I  thought  Mamma  looked  simply  regal  when 
she  was  dressed  and  for  the  first  time  was  ab 
solutely  satisfied  with  her  personal  appearance. 
Even  Una  Mary  was  satisfied,  and  the  Imp  was 
abashed  into  silence.  At  last  her  clothes  did  her 
credit,  and  for  her,  at  least,  the  family  curse  seemed 
lifted  and  about  to  stay  lifted,  for  there  was  an 
'x  awe-inspiring  dressmaker  in  Washington  who  gave 
me  fashion-plates  to  cut  out  for  paper  dolls  which 
were  the  supreme  of  elegance,  and  Mamma  could 
be  dressed  in  copies  of  any  of  them. 


MAMMY  169 

I  had  to  go  to  bed  before  the  party  began,  so 
I  tucked  Elizabeth  behind  a  portiere  with  just  one 
eye  peeping  out,  that  she,  at  least,  might  see  it  all. 
But  Mammy,  who  helped  pass  the  ice-cream, 
stumbled  over  her  and  kicked  her  under  the  sofa, 
so  she  never  saw  another  thing,  and  from  the 
upper  landing  where,  wrapped  in  a  blanket,  I  was 
listening,  I  heard  Mammy  say:  "Dis  house  am 
certain  hanted  wid  dolls.  I  done  swept  dis  room 
myself!" 

To  the  colored  servants  we  owed  a  great  many 
thrills.  Mamma  was  ill  most  of  the  time,  and  my  < 
father  was  busy  writing  during  his  spare  moments, 
so  in  order  not  to  disturb  either  of  them  we  had 
to  be  very  quiet  when  we  were  in  the  house,  except 
in  our  play  room,  which  was  off  in  a  wing  directly 
above  the  kitchen,  and,  as  Mammy  was  eminently 
sociable,  we  were  quite  as  apt  to  stay  in  the  kitchen 
itself.  The  best  time  there  was  just  after  dinner 
while  the  dishes  were  being  washed.  Then  Mammy 
would  sit  beside  the  stove  "Pattin'  Juba"  and 
singing  a  sort  of  wailing  dance  while  I  double- 
shuffled,  flapping  my  feet  in  time  to  her  song,  as 
loose-jointed  as  any  pickaninny,  and  Aunt  Louisa 
and  the  cook  jerked  their  shoulders  and  swayed 
their  whole  bodies  to  the  rhythm  as  they  kept  on 
washing  dishes.  Their  work  over,  Aunt  Louisa 
would  take  out  her  pipe  and  begin  to  smoke  while 


170  UNA  MARY 

Mammy  cracked  chincapins  or  butternuts  that  had 
been  sent  to  some  of  them  from  the  country,  and 
the  real  business  of  the  evening  began  for  me. 
Stories!  Often  I  read  fairy-tales  aloud  to  them,  or, 
better  still,  they  took  turns  telling  stories  of  "hants" 
and  " Night  Doctors." 

Of  course  I  always  wore  a  proper  graveyard 
rabbit's  foot  around  my  neck.  Mammy  had  pro 
vided  me  with  that  when  she  had  only  been  with 
us  for  a  week.  I  also  wore,  strung  on  the  same 
string  with  it,  a  horse-chestnut  to  keep  off  rheu 
matism.  The  ideas  of  servants  seemed  more  like 
Una  Mary's  world  than  any  other  grown-ups'  point 
of  view  I  knew,  for  no  one  else  seemed  to  believe 
in  talismans  and  spirits.  Mammy  had  ghosts 
while  I  had  Goddesses  and  Fairies,  which  simply 
meant  that  we  moved  in  different  social  circles  of 
the  invisible  world  as  we  did  in  this,  but  it  was  all 
quite  understandable.  Even  now  I  cannot  bear  to 
walk  under  a  ladder. 

Aunt  Louisa  had  one  ghost  who  particularly 
shadowed  my  imagination.  He  caught  hold  of 
your  heels  if  you  went  up-stairs  in  the  dark.  I 
have  felt  him  reaching  for  me  again  and  again, 
and  have  only  just  jerked  my  foot  away  in  time, 
saying,  as  Mammy  did  when  she  "felt"  a  ghost, 

"Debbil,  Debbil,  hole  him  back, 
I's  a  Christian  ef  I's  black," 


MAMMY  171 

a  charm  that  so  far  has  always  worked,  for  neither 
Mammy  nor  I  ever  actually  saw  a  ghost,  though 
often  we  had  the  "ghost  feel"  to  our  skins.  Sud 
denly,  without  the  slightest  warning,  cold  shivers 
would  run  all  over  me  and  my  hands  would  get 
damp  and  clammy,  and  Mammy  said  I  had  walked 
through  a  ghost.  She  often  did  in  the  dark,  and 
she  was  sure  a  murder  must  once  have  been  com 
mitted  at  the  head  of  the  back  stairs,  for  she  always 
felt  that  way  when  she  passed  there  at  dusk.  She 
would  have  died  rather  than  go  down  the  back 
stairs  in  the  dark,  and  the  cook  had  heard  moans 
coming  from  that  direction.  Aunt  Louisa  was  a 
person  who  saw  ghosts,  and  it  was  only,  we  felt, 
because  she  slept  at  her  own  house  that  the  back 
stairs'  ghost  was  never  seen.  But  always  in  the 
dark  the  Imp  would  remind  me  that  It  was  there. 

Night  Doctors  were  even  worse  than  ghosts; 
They  stole  the  bodies  from  cemeteries  and  cut  them 
up  at  the  medical  schools.  They  were  responsible, 
really,  for  most  of  the  ghosts  in  Washington,  for' 
a  body  that  was  cut  up  and  destroyed  left  no  rest 
ing-place  for  the  soul  when  it  came  down  from 
Purgatory,  as  most  souls  had  to  now  and  then  to 
finish  up  their  neglected  Earth  affairs.  So  it  sim 
ply  had  to  wander  about  a  homeless  "hant." 
Even  better  than  dissecting  dead  bodies,  the  Night 
Doctors  liked  to  kidnap  living  people  and  cut 
them  up  while  still  alive. 


i 


172  UNA  MARY 

Aunt  Louisa  would  never  go  into  a  Department 
Store  because  she  said  behind  the  counters  there 
were  trap-doors,  arranged  by  the  Night  Doctors, 
that  flew  open  if  you  stepped  on  them,  especially 
if  you  were  a  "  Colored  Pusson,"  and  let  you  down 
into  one  of  a  series  of  underground  passages  that 
honeycombed  the  whole  city,  all  leading  to  Ford's 
Theatre,  where  Lincoln  had  been  shot,  and  now 
the  place  where  the  bodies  were  cut  up.  Aunt 
Louisa  knew  one  man  who  had  escaped  from  there, 
but  only  after  they  had  cut  off  one  of  his  ears. 

They  also  liked  to  get  live  people  to  pull  out  their 
teeth  to  make  them  up  into  sets  of  false  teeth, 
for  if  they  made  up  the  teeth  of  dead  people  into 
sets  the  mouths  of  the  people  who  wore  them 
would  always  be  " hanted."  Mammy  said,  "I  ain't 
gwine  run  the  resk  of  false  teef  ef  I's  'bliged  to 
gum  my  corn  pone,"  and  I  was  thankful,  indeed, 
that  all  of  my  family  had  their  own  teeth.  I  care 
fully  buried  all  of  the  first  teeth  I  was  shedding  at 
this  time  to  prevent  their  falling  into  the  hands  of 
the  Night  Doctors.  I  felt  it  might  somehow  react 
on  me  if  they  got  hold  of  them. 

We  always  went  to  as  many  funerals  as  we  could. 
Mammy  got  me  to  look  up  the  death  notices  each 
day  in  the  paper,  so  whenever  there  was  a  really 
big  funeral  or  any  sort  of  masonic  or  military  one 
—Mammy  would  have  walked  her  feet  to  the  bone 
to  follow  a  band— we  might  have  been  seen,  with- 


MAMMY  173 

out  Mamma's  knowledge,  of  course,  standing  in 
front  of  the  crowd  opposite  the  house,  my  sister, 
Mammy,  and  I,  holding  tightly  to  the  baby's  car 
riage,  watching  each  detail,  from  the  arrival  of  the 
undertaker  to  the  departure  of  the  hearse,  and 
almost  always  at  the  end  of  the  long  procession  of 
hacks  there  would  be  a  buggy  in  which  sat  two 
men.  These,  Mammy  said,  were  the  Night  Doc 
tors,  who  always  came  to  funerals  in  order  to  fol 
low  and  see  where  the  grave  was  dug.  Then  in 
the  nignt  they  could  come  and  dig  up  the  body. 
Sometimes,  when  the  cemetery  was  not  too  far,  we 
followed,  too,  and  saw  the  group  of  people,  the  two 
men  a  little  on  the  outskirts,  standing  about  the 
grave  while  the  casket  was  lowered  into  the  ground. 
Tears  of  sympathy  rolled  down  Mammy's  cheeks 
as  she  watched,  and  if  by  any  chance  the  body 
was  put  in  a  vault  instead  of  a  grave  we  rejoiced 
greatly,  for  then  it  would  be  safe  from  the  Night 
Doctors. 

Curiously  enough,  I  got  very  little  association 
with  Death  and  none  of  the  horror  the  thought  of 
Death  had  given  me,  as  a  small  child,  from  these 
funerals.  They  were  simply  a  pageant,  the  ser 
vice  of  a  strange  cult.  They  were  the  beginning  of 
art  for  my  youngest  sister,  for  as  soon  as  she  could 
hold  a  pencil  she  began  to  draw  cemeteries,  and 
when  she  was  three  she  made  complete  graveyards 


i74  UNA  MARY 

with  stones  cut  out  of  paper  so  they  stood  up  on 
the  lid  of  a  box,  with  holes  behind  them  in  which 
she  could  bury  dead  flies. 

Death,  to  me,  was  quite  different,  something  very 
vivid  and  terrible.  A  pet  white  rabbit  had  died. 
In  the  morning  he  was  perfectly  well,  scampering 
about  the  yard  when  I  let  him  out  and  eating  from 
my  hand.  A  few  hours  later  I  had  come  home  from 
school  and  found  him  lying  stiff  and  cold  in  the  cor 
ner  of  his  box,  a  leaf  of  untouched  lettuce  beside 
him.  The  full  pathos  of  Death  clutched  my  heart 
at  the  sight  of  the  lettuce  leaf,  the  poor  little  rab 
bit  aloof  and  indifferent  beside  it,  little  rabbit  as 
strange  and  remote  from  his  real  self  as  I  should 
be  if  Una  Mary  ran  away  and  left  me  only  Una.  I 
wondered  if  that  was  what  had  happened  to  him. 
Had  his  Una  Mary  gone  and  left  him  so  broken- 
h^arted  that  he  had  died? 

/We  never  missed  any  sort  of  public  spectacle, 
Mammy,  the  baby  carriage,  my  sister,  and  I. 
Mammy  had  an  instinct  for  them  that  almost 
amounted  to  second  sight,  so  even  when  they  were 
things  we  could  not  possibly  know  about  before 
hand,  like  fires,  there  we  always  were,  arriving  usu 
ally  with  the  fire-engines.  We  also  saw  a  number 
of  negro  fights  in  back  alleys,  Mammy  first  shout 
ing  to  some  one:  "Is  dey  razors  or  pistils?"  If  it 
Was  pistols  we  stayed  away,  but  razors  we  never 


MAMMY  175 

missed.  Fortunately,  we  three  children  were  too 
small  to  see  much  through  the  packed  ring  of  spec 
tators,  but  Mammy  stood  on  the  hubs  of  two  wheels 
of  the  baby  carriage  and  got  a  specially  fine  view, 
and  I  was  thrilled  by  the  contagion  of  the  excite 
ment  of  the  crowd  and  the  wild  rush  at  the  end  to 
"get  away  before  the  Cops  come." 

Strange  were  the  places  to  which  that  baby 
carriage  penetrated  with  Mildred  and  me  on  either 
side  of  it,  and,  thanks  to  Mammy,  our  horizon  was 
certainly  broadened  in  many  ways  unplanned  by 
our  parents,  and  from  her  we  all  caught  a  great 
gusto  for  events. 

It  was  on  one  of  these  walks  that  we  went  to 
Rock  Creek  to  see  a  great  Baptist  Revival.  The 
preacher  stood  on  the  bank  dressed  in  a  silk  hat, 
black  trousers,  and  shirt-sleeves,  though  it  was 
November,  and  kept  calling  to  the  people  behind 
him:  "Come  erlong  breddren  and  sisteren,  jest  one 
drap  under  and  yo  gwine  find  yo  Saviour  here  in 
de  bottom  ob  de  Creek."  And  then  we  saw  them' 
dipped,  all  dressed  in  very  premeditated-looking 
white-ruffled  muslins,  and  I  decided  never  to  be 
come  a  Baptist  when  I  saw  the  sopping,  gasping 
creatures  come  out  again.  But  Mammy  admired  it 
greatly  and  said  she  hadn't  anything  against  being 
a  Catholic,  only  she  had  once  been  "baptized  by 
the  Baptists  fo'  to  be  on  de  safe  side  and  not  go 


x        176  UNA  MARY 

Y  down  to  Hell  becase  I'd  only  jes  hed  my  kinks 
sopped."  This  made  me  a  little  nervous  as  I 
knew  I  had  never  been  baptized  in  any  way,  but 
Papa,  when  I  asked  him  about  it,  said  it  was  not 
at  all  necessary.  So  I  told  Mammy  white  people 
didn't  have  to  have  it  done — they  went  to  Heaven, 
anyhow — only  colored  people  had  to  be  baptized, 
x  and  if  they  were  very  black  I  guessed  it  was  best 
to  be  on  the  safe  side  and  to  be  put  in  all  over. 


CHAPTER  XI 
MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN 

'  I AHE  profound  sensation  of  those  first  few 
-*•  months  in  Washington  was  the  city  itself 
with  its  wide,  tree-bordered  streets  of  smooth 
asphalt,  numerous  parks,  and  staggering,  dream 
like  public  buildings. 

I  had  never  seen  any  architecture  more  preten 
tious  than  the  big  hotel  in  Cincinnati  and  the 
Square  with  the  fountain  between  it  and  the  rail 
way  station  and  the  Boston  State  House,  which  up 
to  this  time  had  been  my  ideal  of  grandeur;  so  my 
first  sight  of  the  White  House,  flanked  by  the 
Treasury  and  the  War  Department,  quite  took  my 
breath  away,  and  I  succumbed  utterly  to  the 
Capitol,  supreme  above  the  city,  with  the  great 
flight  of  steps  and  terraces  as  a  pedestal  for  the 
splendid  proportions  leading  to  the  shining  dome 
above.  Never  had  I  dreamed  of  such  magnifi 
cence.  All  I  had  imagined  the  Alhambra  to  be 
sank  into  insignificance  before  this  serene  reality. 

It  became  to  me  the  symbol  of  patriotism — what 
177 


1 78  UNA  MARY 

government  really  meant — for  to  me  it  was  less  a 
building  than  a  monument;  like  a  vast  statue  of 
some  modern  Sphinx,  its  paws  spread  out  at  ease 
upon  its  pedestal — broad,  generous,  capable  paws 
— and  welcoming  the  world  to  come  and  question 
above  them  the  noble,  clear-cut  flanks,  and  the 
joyous,  inscrutable,  argus-eyed  head.  I  felt  the 
words  used  about  Washington  really  described  this 
new  Sphinx  of  Liberty:  " First  in  War,  First  in 
Peace."  It  was,  above  all,  peaceful,  but,  once 
roused,  unconquerable.  Those  paws  would  strike 
to  kill. 

The  Washington  Monument  I  could  not  under 
stand.  It  looked  larger  then  than  it  has  since.  It 
was  .unfinished,  but  the  workmen  had  already 
nearly  reached  the  top,  and  each  day  the  great 
nets,  hung  on  all  sides  to  catch  them  if  they  fell, 
grew  smaller  as  they  drew  in  toward  the  point. 
The  nets,  making  the  top  clumsy  instead  of  deli 
cate,  gave  it  all  a  larger  scale,  so  that  the  day  it 
was  finished — we  saw  through  opera-glasses  when 
they  put  the  capstone  on — and  the  nets  were  taken 
down  I  felt  terribly  disappointed  in  it.  It  seemed 
suddenly  slender  to  insignificance.  I  was  sure  no 
foreigner  would  ever  notice  it  and  certainly  would 
not  believe  it  was  the  tallest  building  in  the  world. 
I  could  not  believe  it  myself.  It  was  some  weeks 
before  I  got  over  my  feeling  and  at  all  grasped  its 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       179 

true  beauty,  but  when  I  did  I  knew  it  was  more 
beautiful  even  than  the  Capitol.  That  was  a 
statue;  the  Monument  was  pure  spirit  and  became 
for  me  a  symbol  of  all  perfection. 

The  stretch  of  Park  from  the  Capitol  grounds   ' 
below  the  Avenue  to  the  White  Lot  behind  the  7 
White  House,  ragged  and  unkempt  as  much  of 
it  was  in  those  days,  and  fronting  on  the  market, 
the  Pennsylvania  Station,  and  general  dilapidation 
of  semi-slums,  was  still  most  impressive  to  me. 
It  seemed  such  a  big  stretch  of  trees  to  be  in  the 
heart  of  a  city,  like  the  park  of  some  castle,  and  in 
it  there  was  what  seemed  like  a  transformed  castle 
built  of  stone  with  real  towers,  the  Smithsonian  < 
Institution,  now  used  as  a  Museum,  and  beside  it 
was  the  National  Museum,  where  my  father  had 
his  laboratories,  and  there  I  always  spent  my  Sat 
urdays. 

I  used  to  take  an  umbrella  with  me  less  for  fear 
of  rain  than  for  the  pride  it  was  to  carry  it  past 
the  doorkeeper  instead  of  having  to  check  it  like 
.the  general  public,  showing  I  really  belonged  at  the 
Museum.  That  proud  moment  over,  I  walked 
past  the  cases  of  George  Washington's  clothes  and 
household  effects,  turned  to  the  left,  and  went 
under  the  models  of  the  giant  squid  and  huge  octo 
pus,  so  large  they  filled  up  the  ceiling  of  a  whole 
room,  and  yet  they  were  only  life-sized,  a  "fact  I 


i8o  UNA  MARY 

deeply  resented;  then  up-stairs,  the  chemical  smell 
meeting  me  half-way  up,  to  the  tower  where  the 
laboratories  were.  There  I  deposited  my  umbrella 
in  Papa's  office,  and  then  the  whole  Museum  was 
mine  to  wander  in  at  will.  I  was  always  torn  be 
tween  the  Indian  collection,  the  stuffed  animals,  or 
the  minerals,  but,  whatever  I  did,  I  always  went 
first  to  see  the  Japanese  lady  and  gentleman  who 
have  for  so  many  years  carried  on  a  flirtation  from 
separate  cases  across  the  main  aisle.  The  man 
seems  to  take  the  whole  affair  as  rather  a  joke;  so, 
perhaps,  it  is  as  well  that  they  are  so  far  apart. 
Her  heart  might  have  been  broken  if  they  had 
been  allowed  to  meet,  or  perhaps,  after  all,  she 
has  only  been  leading  him  on  all  these  years  since 
they  were  "Presented  by  the  Emperor  of  Japan 
in  1876." 

At  noon  I  lunched  with  Papa  in  the  private 
dining-room  with  the  other  scientists  of  the  Mu 
seum  and  the  Smithsonian.  How  kind  to  me  they 
were,  those  dreamy  transcendentalists,  for  that,  I 
am  sure  as  I  look  back,  is  what  many  of  the  scien 
tists  of  that  generation  primarily  were — dreamers, 
philosophers,  poets,  and  mystics — in  their  passion 
ate  loyalty  to  truth  manifest  in  the  facts  of  nature, 
soaring  on  sure  wings  of  new-found  hypotheses 
fearless  through  limitless  space  to  greet  the  rising 
sun!  Theirs  was  the  Vision  of  the  Future,  theirs 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       181 

to  find  the  secret  of  the  Cosmos  and  at  its  centre 
the  all-searching  mind  of  man.  Incarnate  Reason, 
only  lower  than  "The  One"  or,  some  even  thought, 
itself  omnipotent.  No  mystic  in  the  cloister,  his 
hours  occupied  with  the  daily  round  of  service,  his 
soul  suffused  with  raptures  of  the  Infinite,  lived  a 
less  worldly  life  than  these  busy  men,  each  small 
est  detail  of  their  work  a  forging  of  fresh  links  to 
bind  the  earth  and  sky,  a  gathering  together  of 
bewildering  miscellanies  into  some  new  and  shin 
ing  whole. 

Life,  the  great  World  Secret!  Eager  visionaries, 
careful  analysts,  large-brained  and  skilful-fingered, 
on  they  pressed,  no  atom  too  small,  no  sweep  of 
space  too  vast  to  be  stepping-stones  on  their  tri 
umphant  upward  way;  and  far  behind  them,  the 
noise  of  their  coming  but  a  murmur  in  the  distance, 
followed  the  onward  surging  multitudes  of  men. 

That  is  what  science  meant  at  the  height  of  this 
scientific  era.  It  was  knowledge,  it  was  beauty, 
it  was  service  of  God  and  man.  Brave,  reasonable, 
definite,  and  yet  singularly  confused,  blinded  by 
its  own  clear  light  to  half  the  meanings  of  the 
Universe!  As  a  child  I  saw  it  at  its  very  best,  the 
noblest  attitude  of  mind  that  I  have  ever  known, 
the  most  spiritual  in  that  the  whole  life  was  one 
unwavering. sacrifice  and  devotion  to  a  deep,  unseen 
ideal.  Their  heads  were  among  the  clouds,  but 


i$2  UNA  MARY 

their  hands  and  feet  were  carefully  occupied  with 
earth,  for  there  must  be  no  stumbling  along  that 
eternal  path. 

I  went  as  I  pleased  among  the  workrooms  and 
laboratories,  and  no  question  of  mine  was  too  fool 
ish  for  a  painstaking  answer  and  no  occupation  of 
theirs  too  profound  to  be  interrupted  in  order  to 
give  me  help.  Half  of  my  education  and  half  of 
what  I  am  I  owe  to  those  Saturdays  with  their  des 
ultory  wanderings  among  the  collections,  all  vital 
ized  and  vivified  by  long  talks  with  these  men,  who 
were  easy  to  understand,  as  really  great  men  are. 

Science  so  personified  touched  the  depths  of  Una 
Mary's  imagination,  and  those  Museum  days  stand 
out  in  my  memory  luminous  with  the  glamour 
of  My  Country  in  an  encircling  mystery  of  dumb 
immensities  of  vision,  faith,  and  aspiration.  All 
my  mind  and  my  imagination  were  wholly  satis 
fied,  but  the  inmost  being  of  my  soul  cried  out, 
lonelier  than  before.  I  needed  something  more 
tangible.  I  could  not  love  a  Primal  Cause!  My 
ideas  were  too  confused  and  fragmentary  to  ena 
ble  me  to  build  up  any  sort  of  Pantheistic  theory. 
Nature  to  me  still  breathed  of  the  Gods  and 
Goddesses  but  was  swept  by  a  breadth  of  vision 
that  was  given  me  by  science. 

By  the  time  I  was  ten  years  old,  God  had  grown 
to  mean  to  me  a  vague  something  behind  and 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       183 

through  everything.  Above  all,  He  was  the  feeling 
of  " Beyond"  I  so  often  had;  the  feeling  of  some 
thing  I  could  almost  but  not  quite  grasp;  the 
source  of  all  the  intangible  feelings,  those  strange, 
unutterable  waves  of  emotion  that  almost  choked 
Una  Mary.  Ideas  must  come  from  somewhere, 
so  of  course  He  sent  them  and  He  must  also  send 
the  lights  we  know  on  earth. 

It  was  He  who  made  the  sun  and  moon  to  shine, 
who  lit  the  stars  at  night  and  gave  the  fireflies 
their  lights;  and  He  sent  the  flame  when  one 
started  a  fire.  To  strike  a  match  became  for  me 
a  religious  act,  and  if  matches  had  been  allowed 
me  I  might  have  become  a  fire-worshipper,  for  it 
seemed  a  veritable  "  coming  of  the  Light  of  God 
on  Earth,"  and  if  I  struck  the  match  I  brought 
Him,  I,  Una  Mary,  had  this  power  to  bring  Him 
out  of  the  Unknown  here  into  my  very  hand !  And, 
most  marvellous  of  all,  on  certain  cold  days,  by 
scuffling  over  the  carpet  and  then  touching  some 
one,  I  made  a  spark  of  light  spring  out  of  me,  from 
my  very  finger  itself,  and  I  knew  for  a  fleeting 
instant  that  I  was  a  part  of  God,  a  knowledge  that 
passed  as  quickly  and  became  as  vague  as  the 
unreal  feeling  I  used  to  have. 

At  this  time  an  Indian  Priestess  named  Waiwa 
was  staying  with  some  ethnological  friends  of  ours 
who  had  brought  her  on  from  the  West  in  order 


i84  UNA  MARY 

to  study  her  religion.  She  was  a  Priestess  of  the 
Sun  in  the  Zuni  Tribe.  I  saw  her  often  and  felt 
there  was  a  peculiar  bond  between  us,  as  I  always 
wore  a  silver  bracelet  her  father  had  made  for  me 
with  the  signs  of  all  the  Rain  Gods  carved  upon  it 
— a  bracelet  so  sacred  her  father's  house  had  been 
struck  by  lightning  as  soon  as  I  began  to  wear  it, 
because,  so  the  tribe  said,  the  Gods  were  angry 
that  a  " White  Face"  should  know  their  symbols. 
I  offered  to  give  the  bracelet  back,  but  Waiwa  said 
I  might  keep  it  because  I,  too,  believed  in  the  God 
of  Light,  who  was  the  great  God  above  all  the 
little  Gods  of  Cloud  and  Rain.  She  would  explain 
it  to  all  of  them  when  she  returned  to  Zuni,  but 
here  in  Washington,  when  she  prayed  to  him  at 
dawn,  she  could  tell  the  Sun- God  Himself  that  I 
believed.  Each  morning,  until  the  police  objected 
because  so  many  people  collected  to  watch  her,  she 
went  dressed  in  her  priestess's  robe  to  a  park  near 
where  she  was  staying  and,  with  arms  uplifted,  said 
her  prayers  to  the  rising  sun,  utterly  unconscious 
of  the  crowd,  absolutely  wrapped  in  the  coming 
of  the  God.  After  the  police  had  complained,  she 
prayed  each  day  from  the  roof  instead,  a  place 
nearer  to  the  sunrise,  it  seemed  to  me,  and,  as  she 
said,  more  like  Zuni.  How  well  I  understood  her 
prayers ! 

Mixed  with  this  very  concrete  theory  of  light 


MY  ALTAR  TO   THE  VIRGIN       185 

there  was  the  other  confused  idea  of  God,  vague, 
vast,  and  unapproachable,  the  Primal  Cause  my 
father's  scientific  friends  so  often  discussed,  the 
unknowable,  secret  cause  of  all.  Even  evolution, 
that  endless  sequence,  could  not  start  without  Him. 

I  had  casually  heard  of  Christ  several  years  be 
fore,  when  I  had  renamed  Edward  as  Edward- 
Christ,  but  at  the  Sunday-school  where  I  now  went 
he  was  never  mentioned.  I  had  not  yet  advanced 
to  the  class  where  they  studied  about  him,  but  in 
one  class,  after  we  had  finished  our  Old  Testament 
lesson,  our  teacher  used  to  talk  to  us  about  a  person 
who  had  lived  a  long  time  ago  named  Jesus.  She 
taught  us  several  sayings  of  his,  and  I  was  greatly 
surprised  to  find  that  he  was  the  original  Dooun 
Tothers — judging  from  these  sayings,  his  point  of 
view  seemed  extraordinary.  When  he  advised  you 
to  turn  the  other  cheek  and  let  some  one  hit  you 
again,  it  was  against  all  common  sense,  the  only 
sense  I  valued.  I  tried  "Blessed  are  the  peace 
makers"  when  two  boys  were  fighting,  but  the  only 
sense  in  which  I  " inherited  the  earth"  was  that 
both  boys  turned  upon  me  and  rolled  me  in  the 
snow. 

That  Jesus  might  be  the  same  person  as  my 
beloved  Christ  never  dawned  upon  me  until 
Mammy  told  me  about  Jesus  Christ  the  son  of  the 
Virgin.  Then  I  began  to  think  about  him  a  great 


i86  UNA  MARY 

deal  and  felt  sure  he  and  Edward  were  the  same. 
There  could  not  be  more  than  one  "  In  visible 
Friend"  for  me,  and  he  might  easily  have  several 
names,  as  I  was  Una  and  Una  Mary,  so  I  began  to 
try  and  understand  his  sayings,  and  I  loved  the 
Virgin,  his  mother. 

Mammy  was  a  most  zealous  Roman  Catholic  and 
it  is  to  her  influence  that  I  owed  my  next  religious 
phase.  Always  when  she  and  I  were  out  walking 
alone  she  would  take  me  for  a  moment  into  some 
church  to  pray,  or  if  we  were  near  Saint  Augustine's 
when  we  were  out  with  the  baby  she  got  the  sexton 
to  come  out  and  "mind  the  carriage"  while  she 
and  I  went  in. 

Saint  Augustine's — to  this  day  I  cannot  pro 
nounce  it  correctly,  because  when  I  went  there  I 
said  it  as  Mammy  did,  with  the  accent  on  the  first 
syllable,  as  if  it  referred  to  the  month,  as  I  thought 
it  must.  It  is  a  much  prettier  word  so,  and  so  all 
the  colored  Catholics  pronounced  it,  for  it  was 
really  their  church.  Perhaps  it  was  garish  and  full 
of  tinsel — a  colored  church  could  hardly  fail  of  be 
ing  that — but  to  Mammy  and  me  it  seemed  a  place 
of  subdued  splendor,  dim,  purple  mysteries,  and 
palpitating  glamour.  As  we  usually  went  there  be 
tween  services,  it  was  fairly  dark,  with  only  tiny 
lights  hanging  before  the  shrines  and  a  vague  aroma 
of  incense  in  the  air.  Mammy  always  touched  me 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       187 

with  holy  water  as  soon  as  we  were  inside  the 
heavy  leather  curtain  that  so  completely  shut 
away  the  outer  world.  The  cool  touch  of  water  on 
my  forehead  made  the  whole  place  seem  very  real, 
accentuating  the  fact  that  I  was  really  there  in 
body  and  in  spirit. 

I  have  never  dared  go  inside  Saint  Augustine's 
since  I  grew  up — the  memory  of  what  it  meant 
when  I  was  a  child  is  too  dear  to  me,  for  it  all  satis 
fied  a  sharp  inner  craving  in  the  depths  of  Una 
Mary's  being,  though  to  her  mind  it  was  unintelligi 
ble  and  unexplained,  for  Mammy  was  certainly  no 
theologian  and  no  one  else  ever  talked  to  me  about 
Catholicism.  But  it  became  a  very  real  part  of 
those  first  years  in  Washington,  for,  better  than 
anything  else,  I  liked  going  to  church  with 
Mammy. 

She  sang  in  the  choir  and  often  took  me  to  mass, 
depositing  me  in  a  pew  in  charge  of  one  of  her 
friends  while  she  went  up  to  the  mysterious  loft 
above,  and  there  I  heard  all  the  glorious,  rich,  emo- 
tion,al  church  music  sung  by  a  well-trained  choir 
of  superb  negro  voices — the  first  real  music  I  had 
ever  heard,  for  as  no  one  in  our  family  played  we 
had  no  piano,  and  the  musical  side  of  me  would 
have  starved  much  longer  if  it  had  not  been  for 
Saint  Augustine's. 

The  service  that  I  loved  best  was  Benediction, 


i88  UNA  MARY 

still  the  most  beautiful  service  of  all  in  the  Roman 
Church,  it  seems  to  me.  To  my  understanding  it 
meant  nothing.  No  Hottentot  could  have  been 
more  unenlightened  than  I,  but  in  the  lights,  the 
sonorous  chanting  of  the  Latin,  the  wonderful  vest 
ments  changed  so  often  by  the  bowing  and  bobbing 
little  acolytes,  the  shining  rosette  of  golden  rays  on 
a  slender,  golden  pedestal  which  was  taken  from  the 
narrow  box  above  the  altar  and  held  on  high  by 
the  priest  while  a  little  bell  rang  and  all  the  people 
bowed  their  heads,  my  own  head  as  low  as  any 
there,  and  the  air  filled  with  incense  from  the  far- 
swinging,  silver  censers,  while  the  church  trembled 
with  soaring  bursts  of  song  from  the  choir,  upheld 
by  the  fluting  and  the  crashing  thunder  of  the  or 
gan,  I  thrilled  with  a  tremendous  surge  of  response 
to  the  beauty  and  found  a  mysterious  peace  for 
Una  Mary's  soul. 

On  Christmas  we  always  went  to  early  mass. 
We  got  up  while  it  was  still  dark,  dressed  quickly, 
and  then  went  out  into  the  wan,  starlit  streets. 
Cold,  crisp,  and  mysterious  the  whole  world 
seemed,  with  a  pallor  of  light  in  the  East,  and 
silently  we  hurried  to  church,  awed  by  the  strange 
ness  of  the  hour  into  a  dim  realization  of  the  tre- 
mendousness  of  the  occasion,  for  I  knew  it  was 
the  birthday  of  my  own  friend  Jesus  Christ. 

Then  the  sharp  contrast  as  we  came  in  out  of 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       189 

the  unearthly  morning  to  the  flare  of  lights  and 
crowded,  festive  church,  all  a  shining  glitter  ancj 
glow,  like  being  inside  a  Christmas  tree.  For  years 
we  used  to  go  to  the  early  Christmas  mass  in  mem 
ory  of  all  it  meant  to  us  as  children,  my  sisters  and 
I.  The  surges  of  thankfulness  and  awe  that  almost 
made  Una  Mary  cry  were  a  fitting  beginning  for 
that  long  day  of  gratitude  and  joys  that  were  almost 
too  much  to  believe. 

Then  back  through  the  early  sunlight,  the  air 
full  of  the  blowing  of  Christmas  horns  and  ringing 
of  distant  bells,  each  colored  person  we  met  wish 
ing  us  "  Crismus  gif,  ladies,"  to  which  we  answered, 
"Same  to  you,  and  Merry  Christmas,"  everybody 
overflowing  with  friendliness. 

When  we  got  home  we  rushed  up-stairs  to  Mam 
ma's  room,  shouting  Merry  Christmas,  and  there, 
sitting  on  her  bed,  we  opened  the  presents  in  our 
stockings,  one  at  a  time  in  turn,  so  that  all  might 
see  and  admire.  After  that  came  breakfast  with 
more  presents  piled  at  each  plate,  and  often  on  the 
floor  beside  the  table,  too,  and  a  shining  Christmas 
tree  and  a  statue  of  Santa  Claus  in  the  centre  of 
the  table,  all  of  the  day  inseparably  connected 
with  and  penetrated  by  the  spirit  of  the  early 
mass. 

I  had  given  up  the  altar  to  Minerva  when  we 
came  to  Washington,  and  as  yet  nothing  had  come 


190  UNA  MARY 

to  take  its  place.  I  loved  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  but  I  longed  for  something  more  intimate, 
something  I  could  understand,  and  that  should  be 
my  own,  and  I  envied  Mammy  her  religion,  for  it 
was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  seen  any  one  to  whom 
religion  meant  the  sort  of  thing  it  meant  to  me. 
When  we  went  away  for  the  summer  Mammy 
always  slept  in  my  room,  and  I  saw  her  sa}^  her 
rosary  and  I  knew  there  were  mysterious  little  bags 
hung  around  her  neck — all,  she  told  me,  to  help 
her  say  her  prayers  and  protect  her  from  the  Devil. 
If  a  thunder-storm  came  during  the  night  she 
would  get  up,  light  a  blessed  candle,  and  tell  me  a 
story  of  the  Saints,  both  of  us  convinced  no  house 
could  be  struck  by  lightning  in  which  a  blessed 
candle  burned;  or  if  a  storm  came  in  the  daytime 
we  each  took  hold  of  an  end  of  a  piece  of  palm 
saved  for  just  such  occasions  from  Palm  Sunday. 
To  me  this  all  seemed  most  reasonable  and  sat 
isfying. 

The  Ave  Marias  were  the  prayers  I  liked  best  to 
hear  her  repeat,  and  I  loved  them  especially  because 
they  were  the  first  prayers  I  had  heard  that  were 
anything  but  a  vague  horror,  so  I  decided  that  I, 
too,  would  worship  and  pray  to  the  Virgin.  I 
liked  her  for  herself,  the  images  I  saw  of  her  looked 
so  like  a  transcendent  doll — I  made  a  blue  cloak 
like  hers  for  my  favorite  doll  Elizabeth — so  now 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       191 

she  took  the  place  of  Minerva,  but  nearer  and 
dearer  because  she  was  the  mother  of  Jesus  Christ, 
my  own  Edward-Christ,  whom  I  now  always  called 
Jesus  but  thought  of  still  as  my  own  perpetual 
companion. 

I  went  to  school  at  the  house  of  some  friends  near 
us.  Their  governess  had  a  class  of  about  a  dozen 
children.  How  I  hated  it — all  dull  drudgery  of 
learning  by  heart !  There  were  both  boys  and  girls, 
but  we  were  not  allowed  to  play  with  the  boys 
during  recess,  they  were  considered  too  rough,  and 
the  girls  were  the  fluffy,  Real- Girl  kind.  To  escape 
from  them  I  spent  my  time  during  recess  where 
they  were  afraid  to  follow — near  the  top  of  a  large 
weeping- willow  tree  that  stood  in  the  grounds. 
And  there,  in  a  crotch  of  the  main  trunk,  absolutely 
hidden  by  the  trailing  branches,  I  used  to  sit  alone. 
I  made  it  my  Church,  and  it  was  here  that  I  set 
up  my  altar  to  the  Virgin. 

Above  my  seat  was  a  deep,  round  hole,  where  a 
branch  had  once  grown,  like  the  hole  in  the  old 
Sacred  Apple-Tree,  where  I  had  listened  for  the 
omens,  and  as  such  holes  still  kept  an  aroma  of 
sanctity  to  my  mind  I  knew  this  was  the  place  where 
the  sacred  treasures  must  be  kept  like  the  box  above 
the  altar  at  Saint  Augustine's. 

Here  I  kept  the  Minerva  quartz  crystal  now 
transformed  into  a  jewel  for  the  Madonna;  a  bit  of 


i92  UNA  MARY 

turquoise,  because  I  knew  blue  was  her  color;  a 
beautiful  lace-paper  valentine  that  I  pretended  was 
the  service-book  from  which  I  had  seen  the  priests 
read.  I  used  a  small  cardboard  box  filled  with 
pink  cotton  for  my  altar.  Of  course,  the  cotton 
never  showed,  but  I  liked  knowing  it  was  there  and 
I  felt  it  must  please  the  Virgin,  too.  For  my  altar- 
cloth  I  used  an  old,  blue-silk  pincushion  cover  em 
broidered  with  pansies  and  edged  with  lace.  All 
these  I  set  up  each  day  in  the  crotch  of  the  tree, 
with  much  bowing  and  absolute  inward  reverence. 
It  was  not  a  game  I  played,  but  something  that  was 
fundamentally  necessary  to  Una  Mary,  and  surely 
the  Virgin  while  she  watched  me  smiled  upon  me 
as  she  did  upon  my  " Lady's  Tumbler,"  and  per 
haps  the  tears  came  to  her  eyes  when  she  heard  me 
tell  my  beads,  for  those  beads  were  the  greatest 
treasure  that  I  had,  and  to  her  I  dedicated  them. 
They  had  been  the  fringe  of  a  bead  bag  made  by 
my  great-grandmother,  broken  in  places,  so  I  had 
been  able  to  persuade  my  mother  to  let  me  cut  it 
off  and  restring  the  beads— she  had  supposed  for 
dolls'  necklaces — and  I  had  made  them  into  my 
rosary  with  a  bead  cross  at  the  end.  I  had  no  idea 
what  a  cross  meant,  but  there  was  one  on  Mammy's 
rosary,  so  mine  ended  in  one,  too. 

It  was  very  difficult  to  stay  safely  perched,  kneel 
ing  on  the  limb  of  a  tree  while  both  hands  were 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       193 

occupied  with  my  beads,  but  there  I  knelt  hero 
ically,  the  bark  cutting  into  my  shins;  and  while 
I  prayed  I  gazed  above  my  altar  up  to  the  sky 
glinting  blue,  Madonna  blue,  through  the  shifting 
tendrils  of  the  willow  twigs  with  their  graceful 
tracery  of  leaves,  all  a  fitting  background  for  the 
picture  of  Our  Lady  that  my  imagination  painted 
there.  I  understood  why  the  old  Florentines 
painted  her  so  often  against  a  background  of  foliage 
and  sky.  It  is  a  fitting  symbol  of  her,  the  fairest 
green  of  earth,  smiling  as  it  lifts  itself  to  touch  the 
sky.  A  deep,  piercing,  personal  love  of  her  was  in 
my  heart  as  I  told  my  beads.  Instead  of  using 
Mammy's  prayer  I  made  up  one  of  my  own.  I 
said  one  word  to  each  bead,  and  it  exactly  went 
into  the  rosary  twice  with  Amen  at  the  cross. 

"Virgin  Mary,  Mother  mild, 
Take  me  for  your  other  child, 
And  safe  with  Jesus  let  me  play 
Through  the  whole  of  every  day. 
Bless  my  family  and  my  friends, 
And  give  us  love  that  never  ends." 

If  some  one  at  this  period  had  gotten  hold  of  me 
and  made  the  Roman  Church  as  clear  to  my  under 
standing  as  it  was  to  my  heart  and  that  vague 
organ  of  intuition,  my  soul,  I  should  probably  have 
drifted  gradually  and  happily  into  its  fold.  But 
Una  Mary  was  not  to  find  her  salvation  there. 


194  lJNA  MARY 

Mammy,  after  several  years,  left  us  for  a  time,  and 
with  her  going  there  was,  nothing  left  to  link  me 
with  Saint  Augustine's,  and,  though  I  occasionally' 
went  by  myself  to  Vespers,  it  was  not  the  same 
thing.  Without  Mammy  I  felt  an  alien.  It  was 
destined  to  be  years  before  any  church  had  real 
meaning  for  me.  Years  of  struggle  between  my 
heart  and  my  mind  were  before  me  to  prepare  me 
for  that  blinding  miracle  of  conversion. 

When  I  was  nine  years  old  my  parents  decided 
I  was  mature  enough  to  be  taught  definitely  some 
thing  about  religion,  so  I  was  sent  to  the  Unitarian 
Sunday-school,  but,  unfortunately,  it  was  both 
too  early  and  too  late:  too  early  for  me  to  get 
the  least  idea  of  the  sort  of  clarity  and  philosophic 
calm  I  might  have  found  in  Unitarianism  if  I  had 
come  to  it  fully  matured;  and  too  late  for  me  as 
a  child  to  be  led  gradually  and  coldly  toward  it, 
for  all  my  religious  emotional  side  was  already 
awake  and  through  Una  Mary's  worship  and  her 
love  of  beauty  had  been  fed  and  stimulated  for 
.years. 

The  religion  that  ignored  beauty,  that  made 
reason  and  the  intellect  supreme  could  mean 
nothing  to  me,  for  the  highest  things  I  knew  were 
those  intuitions,  those  glimmerings  of  infinity  which 
came  to  me  through  beauty  and  through  love. 
They  were  so  far  beyond  the  grasp  of  my  intellect. 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE   VIRGIN        19.5 

'that  my  mind  could  only  bow  itself  in  humility 
before  them.  They  were  even  higher,  I  knew, 
than  the  sweeping,  world-embracing  theories  of 
science. 

Righteousness,  fearlessness,  and  endurance  were 
the  paths  of  life  the  Unitarians  taught.  Perhaps 
nothing  could  be  better  fitted  to  some  tempera 
ments,  perhaps  nothing  else  could  make  of  them 
as  true  and  earnest  men  and  women,  but  with  my 
temperament  love,  obedience,  and  worship  were 
what  I  had  to  give — obedience  to  the  intuitions 
that  came  through  beauty,  through  the  ache  of  the 
world,  through  joy,  and  from  the  sense  that  I  was 
part  of  the  heart  of  everything;  love  that  bound 
*  me  with  its  filaments  to  all  that  came  within  my 
range  of  being;  and  worship  that  overflowed  un 
bidden,  as  joyous  as  the  birds  singing  with  the 
dawn,  or  bitter  with  the  pain  of  tears,  or  exultant 
as  the  wind-swept  sea — worship  that  bowed  itself 
before  the  Great  Beyond  revealed  through  nature 
and  the  Gods,  the  Great  Unknown  who  was  all 
in  all;  whose  will  was  power,  that  boding  of  an 
infinite  energy  before  which  the  solid  world  might 
crumble  and  vanish  into  dust,  whose  heart  was 
love,  a  pouring  of  unending  comfort  as  life-giving 
and  unheeded  as  the  air  we  breathe. 

I  had  thought  when  I  went  to  Sunday-School 
that  Una  Mary  would  feel  thoroughly  at  home, 


ig6  UNA  MARY 

/ 

would  come  to  her  own  at  last,  but  poor  Una  Mary 

could  not  find  a  place  to  rest  the  sole  of  her  foot  in 
that  building  decorated  in  drab  and  terra-cotta 
\  American  Gothic,  where  we  were  taught  the  names 
of  books  of  the  Old  Testament  and  lists  of  Kings 
and  Judges  but  were  never  given  the  Bible  itself. 

>w  We  used  lesson  books  about  the  Bible  instead. 

Everything  religious  in  me  rebelled,  and  Una  Mary 
shrank  back  further  than  before. 

Una  rather  enjoyed  herself  by  falling  violently 
in  love  with  a  pretty  young  Sunday-school  teacher 
who  wore  a  pale-blue  feather  in  her  hat.  Our 
teachers  were  all  fine,  conscientious  men  and  wo 
men,  actuated,  no  doubt,  by  the  highest  motives. 
Their  only  fault — to  me  it  was  a  fundamental  one 
— lay  in  their  lack  of  imagination  to  see  that  relig- 

v  ion  might  mean  worship  even  to  a  child.     Surely  a 

church  can  give  her  children  worship !     My  colored 
Mammy  gave  it  to  me  through  her  own  deep, 
^ignorant  piety. 

•  !  No  wonder  the  average  child  hates  Sunday- 
school,  just  a  dull  mass  of  petty  drudgery  unillu- 
mined  and  unexplained.  This  one  was  only  typi 
cal  of  many  in  all  denominations.  It  was  the  Sun 
day-school  of  the  period  rather  than  primarily  that 
of  th6  Unitarian  Church,  a  type  that  I  feel  sure 
must  be  passing  fast,  for  with  all  the  changes  in  ed 
ucation  the  teaching  of  religion  must  change,  too, 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       197 

and  there  is  now  some  hope  that  it  may  become  ac 
tually  the  teaching  of  religion  rather  than  a  smat 
tering  of  dubious  facts  from  Hebrew  History  poured 
in  helter-skelter.  We  often  had  talks  from  visiting 
ministers,  and  a  key  to  the  whole  difficulty  may  be 
found,  I  think,  in  the  fact  that  most  of  them  began 
their  talks  either  with  "As  I  look  at  the  rows  of 
your  bright  young  faces  before  me"  or  "My  dear 
little  ones,"  and  yet  those  same  men  in  their  home 
life  were  probably  sensible  and  understanding 
fathers.  If  only  they  might  have  applied  the  same 
intelligence  to  their  Sunday-schools! 

The  church  where  Mamma  occasionally  took  me 
when  she  was  well  enough  was  plain  but  not  sim 
ple  ;  the  ornaments  and  proportions  were  all  wrong, 
it  seemed  to  me,  both  in  the  decoration  of  the 
building  and  in  the  arrangement  of  the  service.  It 
was  neither  severe  nor  rich,  but  had  the  touch  of' 
certain  home-made  clothes.  I  had  once  been  to  a 
Quaker  Meeting  where  the  absolute  bareness  of  the 
building  and  the  unadorned  homely  service  con 
ducted  by  the  people  themselves,  with  its  long, 
peaceful  silences  while  each  soul  listened  for  the 
voice  of  the  Spirit,  had  satisfied  me  as  completely 
as  the  beauty  of  Saint  Augustine's.  The  Quaker 
service  had  even  seemed  to  me  in  its  simplicity  of  a 
higher  type  of  beauty,  like  the  Washington  Mon 
ument.  I  felt  that  either  extreme  was  right.  The 


1 98  UNA  MARY 

Unitarian  service  seemed  to  fall  to  pieces  half-way 
between  them. 

The  music  was  given  by  a  quartet  who  faced 
the  congregation,  standing  in  front  of  the  organ 
beside  the  pulpit,  and  when  the  tenor  sang,  "There 
shall  no  evil  befall  thee,"  it  seemed  only  his  pom 
pous  personal  opinion  and  none  of  his  business  any 
way.  The  two  ladies  in  the  choir  always  wore  very 
sumptuous  hats,  and  those,  I  remember,  I  really 
enjoyed. 

The  congregation  was  made  up  in  large  measure 
of  the  most  intelligent  and  cultivated  people,  an 
intellectual  aristocracy.  Most  of  them  would  have 
died  for  a  principle,  but  their  worship  lacked  gen 
erosity  and  warmth.  I  thought  the  minister  and 
all  the  people  felt  they  were  doing  God  a  favor  in 
being  there  at  all.  Una  Mary  was  smothered.  It 
all  plunged  me  in  overwhelming  depression  and 
made  me  blind  to  the  restrained  spirituality  that 
must  have  been  there,  deep  in  the  hearts  of  many. 
But  it  was  certainly  buried  too  deep  to  create  an 
atmosphere  of  worship. 

It  is  not  a  peculiarity  of  the  Unitarians,  this 
complacent,  frigid  respectability  that  fills  so  many 
churches.  It  is  probably  less  conspicuous  with 
them  than  in  any  other  Protestant  body.  I  merely 
first  ran  across  it  there,  and  the  sense  of  profound 
discouragement  that  I  felt  then  must  be  familiar  to 


MY  ALTAR  TO  THE  VIRGIN       199 

many  ministers  and  priests  in  all  denominations. 
Most  prosperous  congregations  do  not  worship; 
they  merely  go  to  church.  This  has  nothing  to  do 
with  creeds.  The  most  religious  man  I  ever  knew 
was  an  agnostic  scientist.  It  is  a  question  of -fun 
damental  religious  instinct.  It  makes  very  little 
difference  what  people  think  about  God  if  they 
do  not  know  God,  and  all  the  creeds  in  the  worlds 
will  never  teach  it  until  men  will  open  their  hearts 
and  feel.  It  is  pitiful,  the  number  of  hearts  that 
must  be  broken  before  they  open.  Una  Mary  felt 
the  light  shining  through  the  casing  of  her  heart, 
but  her  heart,  too,  had  to  break  before  she  really 
knew! 


CHAPTER  XII 

SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP 

i 

OCHOOL,  as  I  have  said,  was  one  long  drudgery 
S*  for  the  Una  part  of  me,  and  Una  Mary  simply 
went  to  sleep  or  studied  in  her  own  way  the  sub 
jects  that  were  of  her  world. 

Geography  I  rather  liked,  though  it  never  once 
occurred  to  me  that  the  different  patches  of  color 
on  the  maps  represented  actual  countries;  but  their 
shapes  were  interesting.  I  was  especially  attracted 
by  the  pink  boot,  Italy,  and  maps  were  delightful 
to  draw  into  the  wriggly,  parallel  lines  for  seacoast 
and  the  bands,  like  chain-stitch  in  crocheting,  sup 
posed  to  represent  mountain  ranges.  I  felt  as  if 
I  were  drawing  My  Country  and  I  did  make  several 
maps  of  it.  Latitude  and  longitude  were  as  sim 
ple  as  right  and  left  and  seemed  quite  as  arbitrary 
and  important.  To  me  they  were  especially  real 
because  we  lived  just  off  a  meridian  ourselves.  The 
street  at  the  corner  was  built  directly  over  one,  and 
we  always  coasted  down  Meridian  Hill.  Starting 
at  "The  Boundary"  where  the  street  began,  down 
we  flew,  lying  on  our  sleds  face  to  the  snow,  straight 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         201 

down  the  Meridian  toward  the  Equator.  We  in 
variably  bumped  and  fell  off  at  the  foot  of  the  hill, 
to  be  sure,  and  the  street  itself  was  blocked  by  the 
White  House  at  the  other  end,  but  the  idea  was 
of  a  globe-encircling  spaciousness.  It  was  always 
called  Meridian  Street  in  the  old  days  of  Wash 
ington,  but  now  is  officially  named  the  Avenue  of 
the  Presidents,  which  seems  fearfully  provincial  in 
comparison. 

I  thought  of  the  Torrid  Zone  as  a  large  sash 
of  pink  atmosphere  tied  about  the  earth,  fastened 
by  the  three  strings,  Cancer,  Capricorn,  and  the 
Equator.  The  inventories  of  exports  and  imports, 
again  meaning  nothing  to  my  mind  as  facts,  were 
a  great  pleasure  to  say,  long  lists  of  unending  sug 
gestions  of  richness  and  dripping  sweetntss  if  they 
included,  as  they  often  did,  "sugar,  spices,  and 
hides" — hides  were,  I  thought,  a  kind  of  tropical 
fruit — the  whole  series  as  satisfying  to  the  imag 
ination  as  the  "  Purple-sailed  galleys  of  Tyre  laden 
with  rich  stuffs,  gold,  ivory,  and  myrrh"  which  I 
had  dreamed  of  in  my  mythology  days. 

Arithmetic  had  a  certain  charm  because  examples 
came  out  as  they  were  supposed  to  in  quite  a  magi 
cal  way,  simply  by  following  what  Rule  said — 
Rule,  the  wizard  of  strange  incantations,  King  of 
the  little  figures  that  seemed  so  active  and  alive, 
the  King  also  of  the  Logarithm  Table  Land  where 


202  UNA  MARY 

the  magic  was  carried  out  on  a  large  and  much  more 
lavish  scale.  In  plain  arithmetic  one  or,  at  most, 
two  or  three  figures  did  all  the  work  and  gave  their 
orders  to  the  other  numbers,  but  with  logarithms 
whole  rows  of  figures  jumped  out  completely  armed, 
ready  for  their  duty  and  sure  their  cause  was  just, 
invincible ! 

When  I  first  began  to  do  lessons  at  home,  before 
I  went  to  school,  Papa  had  given  me  a  table  of 
logarithms  and  taught  me  how  to  use  them.  He 
said  it  was  the  only  scientific  way  to  work,  so  all 
my  examples  were  done  with  their  help.  I  shall 
never  forget  the  time  during  my  first  week  at  school 
when  I  was  sent  to  do  an  example  on  the  board  and 
raised  my  hand  to  ask  if  I  might  get  my  table  of 
logarithms  which  I  had  forgotten  and  left  in  my 
desk.  The  teacher  nearly  collapsed  in  surprise 
when  I  explained  that  I  always  used  them  and  did 
not  know  how  to  do  examples  without  them.  She 
said  I  must  never  use  them  again  in  school  as  that 
would  be  cheating — how,  I  could  not  see,  and  she 
never  explained,  but  it  made  me  suspicious  of 
logarithms  from  that  day  on.  There  was  evi 
dently  an  unhallowed  quality  about  their  magic. 
It  must  be  black  magic  which  they  practised  on 
the  world  of  innocent  little  numbers  and  naughts, 
the  little  figures  which  were  almost  as  full  of  per 
sonality  as  the  alphabet — not  quite.  They  were  on 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         203 

a  lower  plane,  like  animals,  while  the  letters  were 
Real  People  to  me. 

Figures  and  letters  are  bound  to  have  pecu 
liarly  personal  and  concrete  associations  to  chil 
dren  brought  up  in  Washington,  as  most  of  the 
streets  are  named  for  one  or  the  other.  It  is  curi 
ous  to  have  friends  living  up  and  down  the  alpha 
bet.  We  lived  on  Q  Street.  It  had  one  disad 
vantage  because  I,  for  instance,  naturally  begin 
the  alphabet  at  Q.  I  can  go  forward  from  there 
to  the  end  or  backward  to  A,  but  when  I  am 
looking  up  words  in  a  dictionary  it  seems  absurd 
to  have  to  begin  in  the  middle.  Q,  of  course,  is  a 
very  special  letter  to  me,  absolutely  my  own.  The 
other  people  who  have  lived  on  Q  Street  have  no 
claim  whatever.  Mine  is  the  only  valid  title.  I 
almost  feel  as  if  I  were  in  some  way  responsible 
for  the  little  tail  on  it  that  seems  to  say  I  once 
lived  on  Q.  Purely  from  association,  of  course,  it 
was  a  place,  while  all  the  other  letters  of  the  alpha 
bet  were  people,  just  the  common  herd  if  they  were 
small  letters,  "po'  white  trash"  or  old  families  run 
to  seed,  but  distinguished  personages  if  they  were 
capital  letters,  with  very  marked  characteristics. 

Could  any  one  doubt  the  honest,  good  intentions 
of  H?  Of  course  he  goes  to  town  each  morning, 
a  typical  commuter.  He  wears  a  brown  business 
suit  and  always  does  his  straightforward,  plodding 


204  UNA  MARY 

duty.  He  is  a  person  you  could  invariably  rely 
upon.  He  would  always  be  there  but  could  never 
understand  anything  but  the  obvious.  Art,  liter 
ature,  and  music  did  not  exist  for  H  and  he  never 
had  " feelings."  S  was  his  exact  opposite,  all  tem 
perament,  sensitive,  mercurial,  and  bubbling  with 
enthusiasms.  He  was  a  great  friend  of  Una  Mary's, 
as  he  was  tremendous  fun  and  was  always  most 
unexpected  and  original. 

G  was  the  most  conceited  of  all  the  letters,  a 
very  fashionably  dressed  lady  with  a  lorgnette,  and 
the  sister  of  N,  who  was  quite  a  dandy.  He  was 
usually  dressed  in  a  long,  cutaway  coat  with  a  light 
waistcoat,  a  high  hat,  and  wore  a  pink  carnation 
in  his  buttonhole.  His  neckties  were  dreams — he 
rarely  wore  the  same  one  twice — and  his  scarf-pins 
were  as  numerous  and  varied  as  his  ties.  He  was 
really  very  good-looking  and  had  charming  man 
ners,  but  there  was  a  slightly  shifty  expression 
in  his  eye.  You  could  not  quite  be  sure  of  him, 
though  you  could  trust  him  more  than  you  could 
either  J  or  I — it  was  impossible  to  trust  either 
of  them  out  of  your  sight  for  a  moment.  There 
was  no  telling  what  crookedness  they  might  be 
up  to. 

My  feeling  about  I  was  so  strong  that  I  never 
began  my  favorite  words  with  him.  For  instance, 
it  is  only  with  a  struggle  that  to  this  day  I  can 


SCHOOL  AND   FRIENDSHIP         205 

begin  imagination  with  an  i;  for  many  years  I 
began  it  with  an  e  instead — it  was  too  fine  a  word 
to  spoil.  And  that  I,  myself,  should  have  to  be 
nothing  but  a  capital  I  was  just  the  sort  of  knock 
down  blow  one  had  to  expect  from  an  inconsider 
ate  world.  My  only  consolation  was  that  it  stood 
only  for  the  outside  me,  for  Una,  and  in  no  way  was 
a  symbol  of  Una  Mary. 

They  all  made  a  world  for  Una  Mary,  these  al 
phabet  people.  I  first  learned  my  letters  from  a  set 
of  colored  alphabet-blocks,  capital  letters,  and  very 
great  people,  indeed.  I  used  to  group  them  in  all 
sorts  of  exciting  combinations,  and  I  taught  myself 
to  read  by  first  poring  over  words  to  see  what  let 
ters  were  playing  together  and  making  up  stories 
from  their  arrangement.  At  home  I  had  splendid 
times  with  them  and  soon  learned  to  read  to  myself 
quite  easily  and  rapidly  when  the  book  was  one  I 
liked.  But  at  school  I  was  the  poorest  reader  of 
all,  for  I  could  not  care  whether  that  reading-book 
cat  ever  lapped  up  her  milk  or  not. 

Some  of  our  lessons  at  school  were  given  us  in 
French,  and  that  was  the  crowning  insult  of  all.  It 
made  us  feel  so  self-conscious  that  the  one  bond 
we  had  in  common  was  that  it  became  a  point  of 
honor  to  try  and  pronounce  French  as  if  it  were 
English  instead  of  in  the  affected,  pursed-up  way 
Mademoiselle  said  it.  We  scorned  the  idea  that  it 


206  UNA  MARY 

could  compare  with  English  as  a  language.  I  think 
the  children  I  pitied  most  were  a  family  we  played 
with  in  the  Park  who  had  a  French  nurse,  with 
whom  they  were  obliged  to  talk  French  all  the 
time.  It  was  to  their  credit  that  they  were  aw 
fully  ashamed  of  it  themselves.  Why  I  felt  so 
bitter  about  this  one  language  I  cannot  see,  be 
cause  I  already  knew  and  liked  German,  which 
had  been  taught  me  in  Cincinnati  by  Lizzie  and 
the  Wonder  Lady,  and  Harry,  who  was  now  at 
'school  in  Switzerland,  spoke  French  as  well  as 
he  did  English.  Even  his  letters  to  me  were  writ 
ten  in  French,  and  I  had  to  answer  them  in  the 
horrid  stuff — slush  we  called  it  at  school. 

Poor  Mademoiselle  tried  everything  her  inge 
nuity  could  invent  to  overcome  our  almost  British 
antipathy  to  what  she  assured  us  was  the  most 
beautiful  language  in  the  world.  The  softness  of 
the  "u" — it  was  ecstasy,  she  would  exclaim,  her 
hands,  in  their  black  gloves,  raised  palms  out,  then 
clasped  over  her  heart  while  her  bonnet  strings 
creaked  and  bobbed  from  her  laugh  of  delight. 
She  never  took  off  her  outside  things  while  she 
taught  us  but  kept  on  her  long  black-silk  Dolman 
and  her  bonnet  that  had  a  fringe  of  false  hair 
basted  inside  it  along  the  front.  We  discovered 
this  at  a  Christmas  party,  when  she  came  in  eve 
ning  dress — without  a  bonnet,  of  course — and  we 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         207 

saw  that  she  really  wore  her  hair  parted  and  had 
no  bang  at  all.  As  I  had  never  been  able  to  de 
cide  whether  to  give  Una  Mary  a  bang  or  tied-back 
hair,  I  could  wholly  understand  and  sympathize 
with  Mademoiselle's  having  a  bang  for  work  and 
a  part  for  dress-up  occasions.  /r 

Besides  our  regular  lessons,  she  taught  us  games 
and  songs.  We  played  "Sur  le  pont  d'Avignon" 
and  a  kind  of  " Going  to  Jerusalem"  in  French,  and 
even  got  up  a  few  impromptu  plays.  One  day, 
when  the  school  yard  was  all  white  with  bushes  of" 
spiraea  in  bloom,  Mademoiselle  cut  some  of  the  long 
sprays  and  made  them  into  a  crown  and  garlands 
in  which  she  decked  me  out  for  the  part  of  Ophelia. 
I  was  fearfully  pleased  and  felt  I  had  almost  be 
come  Una  Mary  and  must  look  perfectly  beautiful 
dressed  all  in  flowers,  until  my  Imp  whispered: 
"Look  at  yourself  in  the  glass."  I  looked  and  saw 
my  thick,  tow-colored  pigtails  braided  so  tight — 
Mammy  always  did  them  up — that  they  stuck 
straight  out  behind,  the  hair  above  slicked  back  as 
smooth  as  satin,  so  the  wreath  of  flowers  seemed 
perched  on  a  polished  ball,  ready  at  any  moment  to 
slide  off;  and  the  sprays  fastened  to  my  shoulders 
were  cascading  over  a  stiff  starched  pinafore  and  a 
green  plaid  dress.  Poor  Una  Mary,  knowing  ex 
actly  how  she  looked,  could  not  identify  herself 
with  the  part  of  Ophelia  and  was  awkward  and  ago- 


208  UNA  MARY 

nized  until  her  consolation  came  in  acting  Ophelia 
dead.  This  I  did  with  great  feeling,  and,  as  I  was 
dragged  and  carried  about  on  my  bier,  wickedly  re 
joiced  as  I  listened  to  the  struggles  of  the  others, 
for,  being  dead,  of  course  I  did  not  have  to  speak 
French.  It  was  never  a  translation  that  we  acted 
but  a  version  of  the  play  with  the  scenes  carried 
"out  in  our  own  words.  Once  I  remember  a  war- 
horse  was  referred  to  as  "hors  de  combat."  I  wish 
I  could  see  one  of  those  plays  now.  They  must 
have  quite  cheered  Mademoiselle.  I  am  glad  she 
got  some  pleasure  out  of  us. 

She  was  the  sister  of  a  famous  French  socialist 
and  used  to  tell  us  during  "faisons  de  la  conversa 
tion"  about  "la  vraie  noblesse,"  who  were  "les 
hommes  qui  travaillent."  A  few  years  ago  she 
committed  suicide,  more  heart-broken,  I  hope,  over 
"la  vraie  noblesse"  than  discouraged  by  the  stu 
pidity  of  her  pupils. 

One  day,  when  French  class  was  worse  than 
usual,  the  only  other  worse  thing  happened — we 
were  told  some  visitors  were  coming.  And  then 
in  they  came  to  hear  us  recite.  I  am  sure  the  Gods 
laughed  when  they  sent  Madge  into  my  life  as  a 
school  visitor.  She  was  brought  by  her  mother, 
a  tall,  thin,  sweet-faced  woman  with  earrings,  a 
blue  veil,  and  clothes  that  were  like  Mamma's. 
Madge  was  two  years  older  than  I.  I  shall  never 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         209 

forget  my  sensations  on  first  seeing  her.  It  was 
the  same  certainty  that  I  had  found  something 
which  belonged  to  me  that  I  had  had  when  I  saw 
Elizabeth  lying  among  the  Rea)  Dolls,  for  Madge 
was  as  Un-Real  Girl  as  I. 

She  was  the  only  child  I  had  ever  seen  who  was 
dressed  as  I  was.  Needless  to  say,  her  mother  came  ' 
from  Boston.  She  even  wore  laced  boots,  and  that 
first  time  I  saw  her  she  had  on  a  plaid  coat  with  a 
cape — I,  too,  had  a  plaid  cape,  the  only  other  one 
in  Washington — and  under  it  she  wore  a  gray 
homespun  dress  with  an  olive-green  guimpe,  her 
hair  braided  in  two  tight,  smooth  plaits  behind,  like 
mine.  Homespun  I  had  always  looked  upon  as 
the  exclusive  property  of  my  family,  like  laced 
boots.  I  always  had  dresses  or  spring  coats  made 
of  it — "it  was  so  durable" — and  I  felt  Madge  must 
be  another  myself. 

She  was  as  much  interested  in  me  as  I  was  in 

her,  and  as  we  glanced  sideways  at  each  other  it 

suddenly  came  to  me  that  she  was  more  like  me 

even  than  she  looked.     She  was  like  Una  Mary! 

I  was  sure  she  could  be  a  friend  of  Una  Mary's, 

that  here  for  the  first  time  was  some  one  who  could 

s  understand,  and  I  became  so  excited  that  I  forgot 

myself  completely  and  was  disgraced  in  the  eyes 

'   of  the  whole  school  by  pronouncing  French  cor-  1 

rectly. 


210  UNA  MARY 

As  I  have  said,  I  had  had  no  friends  in  Wash 
ington,  as  I  disliked  the  other  girls  in  school  and 
was  not  allowed  to  know  the  boys,  and  the  only 
other  boys  I  knew  wore  velvet  suits  and  Faunt- 
leroy  collars!  In  our  neighborhood  there  were 
very  few  "nice"  children,  though  there  were  plenty 
of  children,  for  just  around  the  corner  was  one  of 
those  curious  settlements  of  small  wooden  houses 
squatted  casually  down  in  the  midst  of  the  best 
residential  sections  which  used  to  be  so  character 
istic  of  Washington,  shiftless,  untidy,  and  genial, 
with  fences  and  yards  and  often  the  houses  them 
selves  a  tumbled  mass  of  honeysuckle  and  roses, 
and  in  those  houses  abounded  the  joyous  genera 
tions  of  Mammy's  hated  "White  Trash."  They 
used  to  play  during  the  afternoon  on  Our  Street, 
which  was  wide  and  shady,  and  I,  standing  abne 
and  holding  my  doll  in  my  arms  inside  the  iron 
fence  of  our  front  yard,  envied  them  with  all  my 
heart  as  I  watched  them  swoop  along  hand  in 
hand  on  roller-skates,  triumphantly  "snap  the 
whip,"  or  dash  across  the  street  playing  "Prisoners' 
Base";  or  sometimes  a  quiet  mood  would  be  upon 
them,  and  they  would  mark  out  mysterious  dia 
grams  for  "Hop-Scotch."  These  I  studied  until  I 
could  draw  one  for  myself,  with  "Horses'  Heaven" 
at  the  top  and  every  square  correctly  numbered. 
I  marked  it  out  at  the  foot  of  our  front  steps,  and 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         211 

there  I  used  to  play  alone,  hopping  and  kicking  my 
disks,  first  as  Una,  then  as  Una  Mary,  playing  them 
against  each  other.  The  street  children  had  often 
asked  me  to  come  and  play  with  them  and  I  had 
sorrowfully  said  I  was  not  allowed;  but  when  Lily, 
a  tall,  handsome  girl  of  sixteen,  the  leader  of  "the 
gang,"  as  they  were  called  in  the  neighborhood, 
saw  me  playing  Hop-Scotch  all  alone  she  said:  "I 
declare  it's  a  shame.  I'm  going  to  ask  her  mother." 
And  up  our  path  she  boldly  marched,  rang  the  bell, 
and  demanded  "the  little  girl's  mother."  I  could 
not  see  how  any  one  could  refuse  anything  to  that 
splendid,  almost  grown-up  creature.  I  was  palpi 
tating  with  pride  that  she  had  cared  to  have  me 
play  with  her,  and  breathlessly  waited,  hoping 
with  all  my  being  that  I  might  be  allowed  to  do  so. 
But  it  was  another  of  those  familiar  will-o'-the- 
wisp  hopes  and  disappeared  at  the  first  sound  of 
Mamma's  voice,  pitched  in  the  kind,  definite  tone 
that  I  knew  was  final.  She  was  sorry  to  say  no, 
but  was  afraid,  she  said,  that  I  might  be  hurt,  some 
of  the  games  they  played  were  so  rough.  I  was 
utterly  discouraged.  I  wanted  to  get  hurt  and 
tumble  about  again  as  I  used  to  with  the  boys  in 
Cincinnati,  but  I  felt  duty  bound,  in  order  to  back 
Mamma  up,  as  Lily  came  down  the  steps  discom 
fited,  to  say:  "I  wouldn't  of  played  with  you,  any 
how.  You're  not  quality."  But  that  night  I  nearly 


212  UNA  MARY 

cried  my  eyes  out  because  I  had  insulted  such  a 
glowing  and  exalted  being.  My  one  consolation 
was  that  it  was  Una  who  had  done  it.  The  words 
had  slipped  out,  as  they  so  often  did,  before  Una 
Mary  could  stop  her.  The  unfair  part  was  it  was 
always  Una  Mary  who  suffered  for  them  afterward. 
Una  didn't  care.  Her  attitude  was:  "What's  the 
difference?  " 

She  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  creatures  I 
had  ever  seen,  this  warm-hearted  leader  of  "the 
gang,"  and  was  destined  a  few  years  later  to  be  the 
heroine  of  an  "affair"  that  shook  Washington  to 
its  foundations  and  led  to  the  murder  of  two  people 
by  a  man  who  was  almost  crazed  by  love  of  her. 
I  have  never  heard  of  her  since  the  trial — she  was 
quite  innocent  of  any  part  in  the  tragedy — and 
have  often  wondered  what  has  become  of  her.  She 
had  in  her  the  making  of  a  really  great  woman.  I 
know  that  I,  at  the  age  of  ten,  would  gladly  have 
laid  down  my  life  for  her,  and  could  perfectly  under 
stand  even  committing  murder  for  her  sake,  and  so, 
apparently,  could  the  jury,  for  her  lover  was  ac 
quitted. 

This  shows  how  badly  I  needed  a  friend,  some 
one  to  play  with,  and  here  was  Madge  dropped 
from  the  sky.  She  came  to  school  next  day  as  a 
pupil,  and  from  that  first  day  on  she  was  my  friend, 
"a  nintimate  friend,"  the  first  I  had  ever  had. 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         213 

She  did  understand — as  I  had  hoped  in  that  first 
wild  moment  of  seeing  her — could  understand  Una 
Mary's  world,  and  she,  too,  had  "feelings,"  those 
strange  sensations  and  perceptions  that  had  no 
worcls  to  express  them  in  English. 

The  alphabet  people  were  as  real  to  her  as  they 
were  to  me,  and  we  both  adored  the  magic  pictures 
in  the  window-panes  at  school.  The  windows  there 
Were  of  the  small-paned,  old-fashioned  kind,  made 
often  of  very  imperfect  pieces  of  glass,  full  of  refrac 
tions,  bubbles,  and  wavy  places.  In  fact,  it  was 
over  these  that  Madge  and  I  really  found  each 
other  out.  With  fear  and  trembling  I  showed  them 
to  her,  and  when  she  saw  not  merely  broken  colors 
and  distorted  reflections  in  the  glass  but  a  whole 
new  country,  as  I  saw  it — a  place  of  fairy-tale 
glamour — and  when  she  said  at  once,  "What  a 
splendid  castle  on  a  rock  that  is!"  it  was  Una  Mary 
who  hugged  her  and  Una  Mary  whom  she  always 
played  with  afterward. 

How  I  basked  in  this  being  understood,  and  how 
I  adored  Madge,  wonderful  Madge,  who  knew  all 
Una  Mary  knew  and  more,  two  whole  years'  worth 
more,  besides!  I  shared  My  Country  and  all  my 
Inner  Life  with  her,  except  Edward  and  my  Relig 
ions;  those  I  could  not  speak  of  even  to  her. 
With  her  coming  I  gave  up  the  Altar  to  the  Virgin, 
for  I  could  not  show  it  to  her  and  neither,  of  course, 


214  UNA  MARY 

could  I  have  a  secret  from  her.  So  I  took  all  my 
treasures  out  of  the  crotch  in  the  tree  and  packed 
them  away  in  a  beautiful  little  basket  with  a  cover, 
very  precious  to  me  as  it  was  another  of  the  things 
that  had  come  back  with  the  piria  dress  in  Perry's 
Expedition  from  Japan,  and  I  put  them  away  in  the 
bottom  of  my  chest,  my  own  treasure  chest,  where 
I  kept  all  my  most  cherished  possessions  and  the 
one  place  no  one  else  was  allowed  to  explore;  even 
Mamma  would  never  have  dreamed  of  opening  it. 
.There  they  still  are,  the  Virgin  relics,  with  a  lot  of 
old  letters,  the  paper  dolls  I  painted,  a  frog's  skele 
ton  that  I  mounted  myself  down  at  the  Museum, 
my  mineral  collection,  Elizabeth,  whose  hair  is 
now  moth-eaten,  and  a  few  of  the  East  Gloucester 
stones.  I  have  never  had  the  heart  to  "go  through 
the  chest"  and  destroy  them. 

All  through  recess  at  school,  after  I  had  taken 
away  my  Altar,  Madge  and  I  used  to  sit  in  the 
willow-tree  and  "pretend,"  and  during  school 
hours  we  escaped  to  Window-Pane  Land,  that  ex 
quisite,  opalescent  place  of  rocky  summits,  sunny 
planes,  shining,  sunrise  skies,  and  high  adventure. 

Madge  felt  as  I  did  about  the  other  girls  at  school. 
They  were  not  of  our  world,  and  we  could  not  un 
derstand  each  other.  One  of  them  called  Fairy 
by  her  family  was  of  the  most  advanced  and  com 
plete  Real- Girl  type.  She  owned  three  rings  and 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         215 

a  heart-shaped  locket  and  had  twenty-five  cents  a 
week  "  allowance."  Madge  and  I  each  had  five 
cents  to  spend  as  we  pleased  each  week,  which  to 
me  had  seemed  unlimited  in  its  purchasing  power, 
as  I  had  only  recently  been  advanced  from  two 
cents,  until  Fairy  pointed  out  that  I  could  only 
get  one  box  of  candy  a  week,  while  she  could  buy 
one  for  every  school  day,  and  Saturdays  and  Sun 
days  her  father  brought  candy  home  from  down 
town.  So  Madge  and  I  took  to  one-cent  delicacies 
instead  of  boxes  of  candy,  each  of  us  getting  a  pep 
permint  stick  or  a  cucumber  pickle  every  day  at 
recess  and  sucking  it  before  Fairy  with  quite  five 
cents'  worth  of  ostentation  and  gusto  until  we  were 
discovered  by  our  families.  Then  pickles  were  for 
bidden  and  candy  was  cut  down  to  one  cent's  worth 
a  week,  rather  to  our  relief,  for  this  saved  our 
pride,  and  even  our  candyless  Saturdays  and  Sun 
days  were  buried  in  the  oblivion  of  "Our  parents 
don't  allow  us  to  eat  it,"  and  we  were  free  to  spend 
our  money,  as  we  really  preferred,  for  our  dolls,  or 
we  could  save  up  and  buy  plants  for  our  gardens, 
or  a  supply  of  colored  paper  and  crayons. 

Fairy  had  long  brown  hair  that  was  done  up  each 
night  on  curl  papers.  When  she  first  got  to  school 
in  the  mornings  the  curls  were  very  fat  and  lumpy, 
but  soon  they  shook  out  into  beautiful,  bobbing 
spirals,  which  were  the  height  of  my  admiration, 


216  UNA  MARY 

^ 

except  on  rainy  days,  when  they  grew  limp  and 

limper  as  the  day  wore  on  until  they  were  long, 

,  lank  straggles  down  her  back,  a  deep  mortification 

to  poor  Fairy,  as  I  discovered  one  day  to  my  cost. 

It  was  a  very  rainy  day  and  I  had  gone  to  school 
with  my  hair  hanging  loose,  Mammy  hadn't  had 
time  to  braid  it,  a  thing  which  had  rarely  hap 
pened  before.  It  hung  half-way  to  my  waist  now 
and  in  the  dampness  the  ends  began  to  curl  and, 
as  the  air  grew  damper,  curled  tighter  and  tighter 
until  at  recess  it  was  a  mass  of  real  ringlets.  I  was 
delighted  and  showed  them  to  Fairy,  saying,  "I've 
got  curls  like  yours,"  quite  forgetting  at  the  moment 
that  her  own  hair  was  out  of  curl.  She  turned 
upon  me  like  a  fury,  grabbed  my  hair  in  both 
hands,  and  pulled  with  all  her  might  until  I  was 
rescued  by  her  big  brother,  who  had  been  standing 
near,  and  as  Fairy  struggled  in  his  grasp,  her  fin 
gers  full  of  hair,  she  screamed:  "You  have  no  right 
to  have  curls.  They  belong  to  me.  I  hate  you! 
I  hate  you!  I  hate  you!"  Then  she  went  off 
into  almost  hysterics  of  rage. 

The  tears  were  rolling  down  my  cheeks  from 
pain  at  the  hair  pulling,  but  I  was  unconscious  of 
them  as  I  held  Madge's  hand,  and  we  both  stared 
aghast  at  the  spectacle  of  Fairy  beside  herself  with 
jealousy.  Why  she  should  be  jealous  we  could  not 
see.  Why  she,  who  was  given  everything  she 


SCHOOL  AND  FRIENDSHIP         217 

i 

wanted  and  was  so  pretty  and  had  curls  all  the  rest 
of  the  time,  should  grudge  my  one  day  of  curls  to 
me — to  me,  who,  she  always  said,  "looked  queer" 
— was  even  more  than  my  Imp  could  fathom.  ^ 

Again  the  horror  came  over  me  that  I  had  felt^ 
when  I  saw  the  drunken  man.  Which  was  her 
real  self?  Was  it  that  kicking,  screaming  creature 
and  the  pretty,  doll-like  Fairy  just  an  outside  shell, 
a  shell  that  really  ought  to  have  some  other  kind 
of  self  inside  it?  Then  I  remembered  about  her 
mit-crabs  and  wondered  if,  when  baby  outsides  were 
born,  inner  selves  who  up  to  that  time  had  been 
wandering  around  homeless,  perhaps  as  ghosts, 
crept  into  them  and  took  them  for  their  own 
bodies;  and,  of  course,  a  homeless  self  would  be  apt 
to  take  the  first  outside  it  came  to  and  be  in  a 
hurry  about  it  for  fear  some  other  lost  self  would 
get  in  first,  without  taking  time  really  to  investi 
gate.  This  would  explain  a  great  deal  if  it  were 
true — would  really  explain  Una  and  Una  Mary. 

I  propounded  this  theory  to  Madge,  but  she  said : 
" Fiddlesticks!  There's  nothing  the  matter  with 
Fairy's  insides  but  just  plain  temper.  She  ought 
to  be  spanked!"  After  that  I  never  mentioned 
Una  Mary  even  to  Madge. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED 

same  winter,  when  I  was  ten  years  old, 
we  met  Hannah  and  all  three  of  us  became 
fast  friends.  She,  too,  was  like  us;  wore  the  same 
strange  clothes  and  understood.  It  almost  recon 
ciled  me  to  my  own  clothes,  for  they  began  to  seem 
a  necessary  part  of  " feelings." 

She  was  a  very  exciting  addition  to  our  life,  for 
she  came  from  the  Tropics,  had  been  born  and 
always  lived  inside  the  Tropic  of  Cancer  until  her 
father  was  made  "Minister  to  the  United  States" 
and  they  came  to  Washington.  She  was  highly  in 
dignant  when  I  asked  her  if  the  air  was  pink  in  the 
Tropics  and  said  she  "  guessed  they  could  have 
white  air  as  well  as  anybody  even  if  they  did  have 
palm-trees."  She  went  on  to  say,  when  mollified 
by  my  explanation,  that  I  had  thought  so  from 
the  color  of  the  Torrid  Zone  on  the  globe  at  school, 
that  they  did  have  pink  rocks,  and  some  of  the 
mountains  were  pink,  too,  while  the  rest  of  Every 
Where  was  brighter-colored  than  anything  either 

218 


THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED          219 

Madge  or  I  had  ever  seen,  bluer,  greener,  and 
purpler,  all  so  iridescent  it  was  like  living  inside 
an  opal  set  round  with  sapphires,  the  sea  and  the 
sky  were  such  a  deep,  vivid  blue. 

Hannah  was  transformed  in  our  eyes.  We  no 
longer  saw  her  as  a  little  girl  dressed  in  blue  ging 
ham  but  stared  at  her  as  we  would  have  at  a  bird 
of  paradise,  its  plumage  reminiscent  of  the  gaudy, 
evanescent  splendors  of  the  jungle,  for  Hannah  had 
actually  lived  in  this  Aladdin's  Palace  of  a  country 
where  story-book  birds,  plants,  and  animals  came 
true;  where  there  were  forests  of  giant  tree-ferns; 
coral  reefs,  sharks,  wild  peacocks,  mongoose;  where 
goldfishes  filled  the  streams;  where  rubber  plants 
were  trees  higher  than  a  house;  and  in  her  own 
front  yard  grew  a  breadfruit  tree  shading  a  foun 
tain  where  lotuses  bloomed  just  like  the  one  in 
Franklin  Park.  Fancy  having  a  fountain  of  one's 
own!  It  was  like  living  in  a  Castle  or  being  the 
President's  daughter,  and  these  were  all  every-day 
affairs  to  her.  She  actually  had  played  dolls 
among  them!  Nothing  that  had  ever  come  within 
the  range  of  our  experience  could  vie  with  the 
strangeness  of  Hannah's  every-day  life  when  at 
home — even  my  once  having  been  "  drowned  so  I 
was  unconscious"  or  Madge's  owning  a  cocker 
spaniel  and  a  silver  watch  were  as  nothing  beside 
having  a  breadfruit  tree  in  your  own  front  yard. 


220  UNA  MARY 

The  glittering  color  impression  was  what  fas- 
cinated  me  most  in  her  descriptions.  It  appealed 
to  Una  Mary  and  seemed  as  splendid  as  My  Coun- 
try.  I  still  felt  that  My  Country  was  the  one 
place  that  could  hold  up  its  head  in  comparison, 
but  I  could  not  speak  of  it  to  Hannah,  who  got  the 
horrors  at  the  slightest  touch  of  the  Fairy-Tale 
World,  and  Madge  now  felt  she  had  outgrown 
"magics."  She  only  cared  to  hear  about  real 
places.  But  some  of  the  places  Hannah  assured 
us  were  real  had  so  the  sound  of  magic  that  Madge 
was  only  convinced  after  Hannah  had  "  crossed 
her  heart"  they  were  true.  And  no  wonder  she 
doubted  such  things  as  a  lake  of  perpetual  fire 
on  top  of  a  mountain,  and  a  waterfall  that  fell  from 
so  great  a  height  it  never  reached  the  ground  at  all 
but  blew  off  in  a  veil  of  mist;  and,  least  convinc 
ing  of  all,  was  Hannah's  casual  remark  that  she 
could  "see  a  King  and  Queen  any  day.  That  was 
nothing!"  I  always  felt  a  queer  excitement  and 
glamour  about  Hannah,  who  knew  as  experience 
so  much  that  Una  Mary  just  imagined  it  made 
her  seem  a  sort  of  "real-life"  Una  Mary,  and  the 
feeling  never  wore  off,  though  she  soon  got  tired  of 
telling  us  about  her  home,  and  our  life  together 
settled  down  into  the  commonplace  ruts  of  school 
and  playing  dolls. 

Hannah  was  even  gloomier  about  her  outside 


THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED          221 

self  than  I  was  about  Una,  which  surprised  me  as 
every  other  child  I  knew  liked  herself.  She  was 
then  one  of  those  unfortunate  overgrown  children, 
towering  head  and  shoulders  above  every  one  her 
own  age;  and,  as  she  was  naturally  shy,  she  felt 
she  was  practically  an  elephant,  and  she  hated  her 
clothes  as  we  hated  ours,  though  she  was  luckier 
than  we  were,  for  she  had  a  best  dress  which  we  all 
really  liked.  It  was  made  of  pale-green  cashmere 
trimmed  with  narrow  brown  velvet  ribbon.  This, 
greatly  to  my  delight,  I  inherited  when  she  had 
outgrown  it.  I  fell  heir  to  many  of  her  clothes, 
for  Hannah  kept  on  growing  so  fast  that,  in  spite 
of  tucks  and  let-down  hems,  she  shot  through  her 
dresses  long  before  they  were  worn  out. 

With  Madge  and  Hannah  for  friends,  my  life 
became  very  happy  and  less  tinged  by  a  feeling  of 
difference  from  other  people.  At  last  I  could  snub 
my  Imp,  when  he  made  hateful  remarks,  by  saying 
that  Madge  and  Hannah  were  like  that,  too,  though 
we  felt,  all  three  of  us,  that  there  was  something 
radically  wrong  about  us  which  prevented  our 
being  of  the  Real- Girl  kind,  that  species  of  child 
we  pretended  to  scorn  but  would  have  given  our 
life's  blood  to  become.  We  hoped  the  trouble  lay 
mainly  with  our  clothes,  for  no  other  children 
looked  as  queer  as  we  did  except  the  daughters  of 
the  British  Ambassador. 


222  UNA  MARY 

I  remember  one  year  we  all  suffered  from  leg 
horn  hats  with  striped  Italian-silk  caps  ending  in 
tassels  for  crowns.  Hannah's  sister  brought  ours 
to  us  from  Europe,  and  the  English  girls,  who 
rather  admired  them,  had  theirs  when  they  arrived. 
We  despised  ours.  The  little  street  boys  used  to 
call  after  me,  "Towhead,  Tassel  Top,"  which  so 
wore  upon  me,  after  the  Imp  adopted  it  as  his 
favorite  refrain,  that  I  finally  bit  a  piece  out  of  the 
rim  of  my  hat  so  that  it  could  no  longer  be  worn 
in  the  city  but  only  in  the  country,  a  heaven  too 
exclusive  for  street  boys  and  where  the  Imp  was 
almost  negligible. 

'  The  height  of  fashion  was  as  far  from  our  ideal 
as  the  sensible.  We  simply  longed  to  be  of  the 
vast  majority.  The  next  winter  as  we  passed 
through  Boston — the  only  stores  Mamma  felt  she 
could  rely  upon  were  there — I  was  allowed  to  select 
my  own  winter  coat,  and  my  aunt,  who  was  with 
me,  told  Mamma  with  disgust  that  I  had  picked  out 
the  commonest  one  we  saw.  How  I  wished  all  my 
clothes  could  be  common! 

We  played  in  the  parks  every  afternoon.  There 
are  so  many  and  such  varied  parks  in  Washington 
that  we  could  select  a  park  to  suit  the  mood  of 
almost  any  day.  We  were  allowed  to  roam  about 
alone  now,  Madge  and  I,  and  could  always  "pick 
up"  Hannah.  I  had  even  gone  to  the  dentist's 


THE   GAMES  WE  PLAYED          223 

and  down-town  shopping  alone,  but  that  was  con 
sidered  rather  adventurous.  When  a  social,  dem 
ocratic  mood  was  upon  us  we  went  to  Franklin 
Park,  where  we  could  talk  to  the  public-school 
children  as  they  came  out  of  the  near-by  Franklin 
School  at  three  o'clock — our  school  was  out  at 
one — for  when  alone  and  unhampered  I  threw 
Mammy's  "quality"  standard  to  the  wind,  and  we 
had  very  satisfactory  times  playing  jackstraws  and 
" swopping  alleys"  with  them.  I  occasionally  see 
one  of  them  in  Market  now,  a  placid,  round-faced 
matron  with  a  basket  on  her  arm,  and  much 
happier  she  looks  than  most  of  the  Quality  I 
know. 

Then  there  were  other  reasons  why  Franklin 
Park  was  desirable.  First  and  foremost,  it  had  a 
fountain,  and  in  warm  weather  the  fountain  played, 
tossed,  and  caught  and  laughed  over  the  glittering, 
bubbling  spray  that  fell  splashing  to  the  basin 
where  wise  old  goldfish,  fantails,  hid  under  the 
shade  of  the  lotus  leaves.  The  lotus  flowers,  when 
there  were  any,  drowsed  away  the  hours  wrapped 
in  Oriental  calm  caught  off  into  a  timeless  space, 
unconscious  alike  of  us  and  of  the  fountain.  We 
never  talked  about  the  lotus  flowers.  They  affected 
us  too  deeply,  and  even  Hannah,  who  had  seen  them 
all  her  life,  had  a  far-away  dream  quality  in  her 
gaze  as  she  looked  at  them;  and  Una  Mary  knew 


224  UNA  MARY 

they  were  not  flowers  but  incarnations — of  what, 
I  did  not  know;  but  I  felt  the  knowledge  hovering 
on  the  border  of  my  consciousness. 

In  this  park,  too,  there  were  the  finest  flowering 
cherry  and  peach  trees  in  the  city — the  double- 
flowered  Japanese  kind,  pink-crested  billows  foam 
ing  with  petals,  rather  than  trees.  We  always 
went  there  on  Peach-Tree  Saturday.  It  is  a  secret 
which  Saturday  that  was. 

^  Lafayette  Park  was,  of  course,  pre-eminent  for 
its  magnolia-trees,  large,  old  ones  with  flowers  late 
in  the  spring  that  were  over  a  foot  in  diameter — 
Empresses  of  flowers,  holding  court  among  the  rich, 
green,  shining  leaves.  All  the  trees  in  Lafayette 
Park  seemed  older  and  more  established  than  in 
the  other  parks,  seemed  to  have  the  feel  of  old 
parts  of  the  city,  grew  with  more  dignity  and  a 
sort  of  high-bred  air  of  reserve  that  ignored  un- 
swept  paths  and  trifling  dilapidations.  They  even 
seemed  to  like  the  green  corroding  the  bronze  of 
the  statue  in  their  midst.  I  think  they  felt  really 
proud  of  it  as  showing  that  he,  too,  was  of  the  old 
regime  and  no  upstart,  newly  "  Erected  by  order 
of  Congress."  There  was  moss  instead  of  grass 
under  some  of  the  trees,  their  shade  was  so  dense. 
This  is  the  park  we  went  to  when  there  were 
weighty  matters  on  hand,  secrets;  or  when  "pre 
tending"  must  be  done  in  a  serious,  dignified  way. 


THE   GAMES  WE  PLAYED          225 

It  was  always  Una  Mary,  flitting  and  elusive,  who 
played  in  Lafayette  Park. 

Dupont  Circle  was  the  park  where  we  played 
most.  It  was  the  nearest,  and  then  one  did  not 
have  to  be  in  any  special  mood  to  go  there.  It 
took  you  in  feeling  anyhow,  and,  needless  to  say, 
had  no  very  marked  characteristics,  except  that 
its  flower-beds  were  always  attractive.  They  kept 
pansies  in  them  all  winter  and  not  a  week  passed, 
no  matter  how  cold  it  was,  that  we  could  not  find 
at  least  one  pansy  in  bloom;  and  the  forsythia  and 
pink  magnolias  came  out  there  before  they  did  in 
any  other  place,  except  in  our  own  back  yard. 

How  we  loved  those  flower-filled,  beautifully 
arranged  Washington  parks  with  their  luxuriant, 
dense-leaved  trees!  As  I  walk  through  them  now 
each  tree  rustles  to  me  of  " secrets"  quivering  with 
Una  Mary's  "Long  Ago,"  and  the  shade  under 
them  is  saturated  with  mysterious  excitements. 

Madge's  father,  like  mine,  was  a  scientist,  so  she, 
too,  knew  more  or  less  about  plants  and  animals, 
and  in  return  for  what  Hannah  told  us  of  the 
almost  unbelievable  wonders  of  her  country  we 
taught  her  all  we  knew  about  our  own  flowers,  less 
showy  than  hers,  perhaps,  but  infinitely  lovable, 
and  she  soon  cared  for  them  with  a  depth  of  feeling 
that  only  Una  Mary  could  understand. 

We  had  almost  a  flower  cult,  we  were  all  so 


226  UNA  MARY 

devoted  to  them,  a  worship  of  the  seasons  in  terms 
of  the  plants  they  brought,  and  even  the  changes 
of  color  the  bare  twigs  went  through  in  the  early 
spring,  long  before  there  was  the  slightest  indica 
tion  of  leaves,  were  absorbingly  important  to  us. 

With  Madge  and  Hannah  to  share  all  my  outer 
and  part  of  my  inner  life,  I  became  much  more 
Una  and  less  Una  Mary.  Not  that  I  was  then 
conscious  of  it  in  those  terms;  on  the  contrary,  I 
thought  I  was  more  Una  Mary  because  they  were 
her  friends  and  she  at  last  had  a  chance  to  come 
outside  and  play.  They  were  her  friends,  that  is 
true,  and  it  was  this  fact  that  made  them  the  first 
real  friends  I  had  ever  had;  but,  having  them  to 
play  with  life  was  very  active  and  happy,  full  of  out 
ward  concrete  events,  leaving  very  little  time  when 
I  could  dream  or  pretend  as  Una  Mary  except 
at  night.  The  before-going-to-sleep  time  was  still 
wholly  hers  to  spend  with  Edward  in  My  Country. 

Dolls  and  a  Paper  Dolls'  House  were  Hannah's 
absorbing  passion,  and,  of  course,  Madge  and  I  at 
once  started  Paper  Dolls'  Houses  of  our  own. 
They  were  large  scrap-books  in  which  we  pasted 
mantels,  doorways,  windows,  furniture,  and  bric-a- 
brac  cut  from  the  advertisements  in  the  backs  of 
magazines.  Each  double  page  was,  of  course,  a 
room,  and  our  great  difficulty  was  to  find  all  the 
things  we  needed  to  furnish  it  of  the  same  scale. 


THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED          227 

Often  in  advertisements  it  said:  "On  receipt  of 
five  cents  for  postage  we  will  mail  you  our  splen 
didly  illustrated  catalogue."  In  catalogues  the 
illustrations  were  apt  to  be  of  the  same  size  and  so 
seemed  absolutely  made  to  use  in  furnishing  our 
houses.  We  got  Madge's  maid  to  write  for  them 
for  us,  supplying  the  five  cents  in  turn  as  it  could 
not  be  divided  into  thirds.  The  Wakefield  Rattan 
Company  issued  the  catalogues  we  prized  most. 

Our  paper  dolls  would  soon  have  lived  in  veri 
table  palaces  of  wickerwork,  plush  upholstery,  and 
potted  plants  on  flower  stands  if  Mamma  had  not 
discovered  through  the  sudden  bulkiness  of  my 
mail  that  we  were  sending  for  the  catalogues  and 
put  a  stop  to  it  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  fair 
to  the  people  who  published  them,  as,  she  explained, 
we  were  not  the  buying  public  and  so  we  were 
really  getting  the  catalogues  under  false  pretences. 
I  asked  if  I  might  send  for  them  if  I  wrote  myself 
and  said  we  were  just  little  girls,  and  Mamma  said 
I  might,  that  that  would  make  it  quite  fair. 

Mantelpieces  were  what  we  needed  most,  and  a 
catalogue  containing  twenty-five  plates  was  adver 
tised;  so  I  wrote  to  the  mantel  firm  myself.  I 
copied  the  letter  four  times  before  it  was  all  spelled 
correctly,  and  then  the  Imp  dabbed  on  a  blot.  In 
it  I  explained  that  we  did  not  expect  to  order  any 
mantelpieces  ourselves,  but  we  could  use  all  those 


228  UNA  MARY 

they  illustrated  in  our  paper  dolls'  houses,  where, 
of  course,  they  would  be  seen  by  our  friends,  many 
of  whom  were  building,  and  so  I  felt  it  might  really 
pay  them  in  the  end  as  an  advertisement.  I  added 
that  in  case  they  did  not  care  to  send  me  their 
catalogue  I  hoped  they  would  return  the  enclosed 
five-cent  stamp,  as  it  had  cost  me  a  whole  week's 
allowance. 

By  return  mail  I  received  a  bundle  of  catalogues 
and  additional  plates  that  had  cost  the  mantel  firm 
thirty-five  cents  for  postage!  Their  generosity 
downed  Mamma's  arguments  forever.  It  proved 
to  our  minds  that  the  firms  felt  it  paid  them, 
from  a  business  point  of  view,  to  send  us  the  cata 
logues.  And  I  really  think  it  did,  for  the  spell  cast 
over  me  by  some  of  those  paper  dolls'  chairs  and 
tables  has  made  me  buy  some  exactly  like  them  for 
my  grown-up  house.  There  were  two  rattan  chairs 
in  particular  I  simply  had  to  have  as  soon  as  I  went 
to  housekeeping,  and  it  was  a  terrible  wrench  to 
deny  myself  a  sofa  shaped  like  a  shell — it  was  my 
great  pride,  on  pages  3-4,  The  Parlor — and  I  long 
for  it  still  for  sentiment's  sake.  That  particular 
mantel  firm  I  have  recommended  to  all  the  archi 
tects  I  know.  They  were  delightful  mantels  for 
slim  young-men  paper  dolls  to  lean  against  as  they 
smiled  down  at  lovely  ladies,  sitting  on  "Nan- 
tasket  sofa,  No.  17." 


THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED          229 

We  started  a  magazine  called  The  Ghosts1  Com 
panion,  illustrated  with  labyrinths  it  was  sup 
posed  to  be  the  ghosts'  pleasure  to  explore  at 
night.  I  always  left  my  copy  at  the  bottom  of 
the  back  stairs,  and  it  so  pacified  the  ghost  there 
that  I  never  once  had  the  "ghost  feel"  at  my  skin; 
and  Aunt  Louisa  couldn't  scent  him  even  on  Hal 
lowe'en. 

I  gave  a  Hallowe'en  party  that  year,  with  the 
delighted  assistance  of  Aunt  Louisa,  Mammy,  and 
the  cook  we  had  then,  Abbie,  who  was  as  great  an 
authority  on  ghosts  as  Aunt  Louisa.  It  was  even 
whispered  darkly  in  the  kitchen  "dat  she  cud  make 
hoodoo  powders,"  in  consequence  of  which  we  all 
treated  her  with  great  respect.  I  wondered  if 
she  could  give  me  a  powder  that  would  make  me 
really  into  Una  Mary,  but  I  did  not  dare  try,  for  it 
might  kill  Una  instead.  A  powder  had  killed  a 
girl  Mammy  knew — she  took  one  she  thought  was 
going  to  make  her  grow  beautiful  and  then  found 
she  had  taken  by  mistake  the  grow-ugly  kind  she 
had  bought  to  give  to  some  one  else,  so  she  just 
went  to  bed  and  died,  in  spite  of  the  doctor,  who 
examined  the  powder  and  said  there  was  nothing 
in  it  to  make  her  sick,  as  it  was  only  made  of  plain 
white  flour — which  simply  proved  to  our  minds 
how  little  doctors  knew.  As  Aunt  Louisa  said: 
"No  doctor  kahn't  cure  yo'  when  he  got  no  more 


230  UNA  MARY 

respec'  for  hants  en  debbils  den  er  body-snatcher. 
Dere's  hoodoos  mixed  wid  ebery  ailin'.  De  onliest 
t'ing  is  er  black  cat  to  suck  yo'  bref  and  suck  out 
de  hoodoo."  I  really  pitied  the  poor  doctors  for 
their  ignorance.  Our  cat  had  three  white  hairs  in 
-nis  tail,  but  I  hoped  he  would  still  do  in  an  emer 
gency. 

Abbie  must  have  called  in  all  the  ghosts  at  her 
command  to  come  to  my  party,  such  strange  things 
happened  that  Hallowe'en.  They  made  melted 
lead,  when  it  was  poured  into  cold  water,  take  fan 
tastic  shapes  by  which  Aunt  Louisa  could  tell  our 
fortunes.  Even  good,  sturdy,  common-sense  ap 
ples  were  visibly  bewitched  and  absolutely  sprang 
away  from  us  when  we  tried  to  bite  them  hanging 
at  the  ends  of  long  strings  from  the  kitchen  ceiling; 
and  as  for  the  apples  we  bobbed  for  in  the  laundry 
tubs,  they  splashed  us  from  head  to  foot  as  we 
came  up  empty-mouthed  and  sputtering;  and  ap 
ple  parings,  after  we  had  whirled  them  three  times 
around  our  heads,  fell  in  letters  that  were  the  ini 
tials  of  the  men  we  were  to  marry.  Mine  fell  in  the 
shape  of  the  letter  G,  which  was  a  blow,  as  the  only 
man  I  knew  whose  name  began  with  G  was  an 
elderly  inventor  whom  I  hated  because  he  always 
kissed  me  when  he  came  to  the  house  and  gave  me 
handkerchiefs  each  Christmas.  There  was  also  a 
lady  who  always  gave  us  handkerchiefs,  and  to  this 


THE   GAMES   WE  PLAYED          231 

day  I  do  not  know  her  whole  name,  as  we  never 
called  her  anything  but  Mrs.  Handkerchief-Smith. 

It  was  a  very  gay  party,  indeed.  I  think  they 
must  have  been  visiting  ghosts  that  night — 
"  Kinder  tramp  ghosteses"  Mammy  called  them, 
not  "so  spectable  ez  er  house  ghost  dats  boun  ter 
hant  regular."  I  think  she  looked  upon  them  with 
the  same  sort  of  scorn  she  felt  for  "dem  no-count 
yaller  gals  dats  allus  er  changin'  places" — stray 
ghosts,  perhaps,  that  had  not  as  yet  found  "out- 
sides"  to  slip  into,  allowed  for  this  one  night  in 
the  year  to  come  from  the  outer  darkness  into  our 
houses,  so  glad  of  the  warmth  and  jollity  that  they 
were  on  their  best  company  behavior,  not  terri 
fying  at  all  but  full  of  rollicking  fun. 

They  even  protected  us  for  that  one  night  from 
our  "Regular  Hant,"  the  back-stairs  ghost,  for  I 
came  down  those  stairs  backward  holding  a  mirror 
and  did  not  see  a  single  thing  reflected  in  it,  which 
was  secretly  a  disappointment,  as  I  had  hoped  for 
a  shuddering  glimpse  of  the  "Back-stairs  It." 

The  magazine,  too,  naturally  gave  the  ghosts  a 
friendly  feeling  toward  us,  and  we  were  no  longer 
afraid  of  them;  even  the  one  who  grabbed  your 
heels  in  the  dark  would  respect  the  artist  of  such 
fascinating  and  difficult  labyrinths.  I  dedicated 
several  of  them  to  him  and  arranged  various  treats 
and  surprises  to  lure  him  along  the  way.  For  in- 


232  UNA  MARY 

stance,  when  he  had  wandered  only  a  few  miles 
along  the  wiggly  line  that  was  the  path  he  came  to 
a  cat  adorned  with  a  blue-crayon  bow,  his  to  keep 
if  he  wanted  her;  and  a  little  farther  along  he  might 
come  to  an  enclosure  where  he  could  rest  on  a 
bench  and  listen  to  the  songs  of  four  caged  canaries; 
then,  if  he  was  clever  enough  to  get  out  of  there, 
he  discovered  a  diamond  ring  lying  at  his  feet — 
you  knew  it  was  a  diamond  because  it  was  drawn 
with  innumerable  pencilled  rays  coming  from  the 
stone — and  so  on;  one  present  after  another 
tempted  him  along  until  he  found  himself  at  the 
centre,  living  in  a  delightful  outlined  house  with 
green-chalk  blinds,  surrounded  by  a  garden  with  a 
white-crayon  picket  fence — every  one  knows  the 
charm  of  using  white  crayon — and  a  padlocked 
gate. 

I  am  sure  there  are  many  ghosts  still  prisoned  in 
those  pictured  labyrinths,  for  it  was  most  difficult 
when  once  inside  to  get  out  again.  That  gate  in 
the  picket  fence  may  have  closed  forever  on  the 
heel-grabbing  ghost.  I  have  never  felt  him  since 
then.  At  any  rate,  I  drew  a  very  formidable  pad 
lock  on  the  gate! 

Madge  made  the  best  labyrinths  of  all — they  were 
her  idea  originally — and  some  of  hers  were  so  com 
plicated  that  after  they  were  finished  she  could 
not  find  the  way  out  herself.  She  gave  names  in 


THE  GAMES  WE  PLAYED          233 

printed  letters  to  the  resting-places  along  the  paths. 
Qne,  I  remember,  which  sounded  irresistible  was 
"Spaniel's  Delight." 

We  were  all  of  us  full  of  superstitions.  Hannah 
had  a  strange,  miscellaneous  collection  of  fears  and 
prejudices  handed  on  to  her  by  their  native  and 
Chinese  and  Japanese  servants,  plus  the  good, 
solid  old  Calvinistic  horrors  an  aunt  had  felt  it  her 
duty  to  try  and  implant,  and  Madge  had  had  an 
Irish  nurse  of  an  imaginative  and  picturesque  turn 
of  mind;  so  all  these,  added  to  my  negro  store,  gave 
us  a  rich  and  varied  assortment,  with  something  to 
fit  every  occasion  in  life. 

Mamma  was  very  fond  of  a  green  vine  called 
Wandering- Jew,  which  grows  in  water  in  a  dank, 
unwholesome  sort  of  way.  Ever  since  I  could  re 
member  there  had  been  vases  of  it  on  the  mantel 
piece  and  in  the  centre  of  the  dining-table.  Madge 
one  day  said  that  there  was  always  illness  in  a 
house  where  Wandering- Jew  grew — her  nurse  had 
told  her  so — and  that  must  be  the  reason  why  my 
mother  was  an  invalid  most  of  the  time. 

We  were  all  fearfully  shocked,  my  sisters  and  I, 
and  felt  it  was  almost  our  fault  that  Mamma  had 
been  ill  so  long.  If  we  had  only  known  before! 
Naturally,  the  best  thing  we  could  do  was  at  once 
to  gather  up  the  pieces  of  vine  from  all  the  vases 
and  destroy  them.  This  we  did;  tore  them  to 


234  UNA  MARY 

shreds  and  buried  the  fragments  a  foot  deep  in  the 
back  yard.  Afterward  we  thought  Mamma  seemed 
a  little  better,  and,  anyway,  as  Madge  said,  we  had 
prevented  her  growing  any  worse  and  probably 
had  saved  her  life. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD 

had  endless  "feelings,"  Madge,  Hannah, 
and  I,  for  which  there  seemed  to  be  no 
words  in  English  and  none  in  the  French  and  Ger 
man  we  knew,  and  certainly  not  in  the  few  stray 
words  and  phrases  Hannah  knew  from  the  language 
spoken  by  their  natives  at  home  and  which  she 
had  taught  us  for  "secrets." 

Words  before  had  seemed  a  negligible  quantity, 
merely  our  slaves  and  puppets.  Now  suddenly 
they  seemed  powerful,  assertive,  in  a  measure  our 
masters,  for  our  thoughts  could  express  themselves 
only  within  the  limits  words  had  fixed  for  them;  if 
they  tried  to  soar  beyond,  our  thoughts  were  lost 
as  far  as  others  were  concerned.  Una  Mary  might 
hover  free  as  air  through  far-reaching  realms  of  in 
tuition  and  feeling,  but  if  she  tried  to  share  those 
realms,  tried  to  give  them  to  Una  to  express,  words 
were  the  tyrants  who  decreed  "just  so  far  and  no 
farther  may  you  go.  If  you  break  beyond  our 
walls,  oblivion  is  your  fate,  the  outer  nothingness 

235 


236  UNA  MARY 

of  other  people's  minds."  I  was  as  surprised  when 
I  realized  this  as  Marie  Antoinette  when  the  Pop 
ulace  threw  her  into  the  B  as  tile. 

Some  of  our  "feelings"  were  too  vague  for  us  to 
define  in  any  way,  but  others  were  quite  concrete 
and  to  be  explained  if  only  the  words  for  them 
existed,  so  we  decided  with  some  other  children  to 
help  out  the  language  by  making  up  the  missing 
words  ourselves.  I  think  it  was  Madge  who  in 
vented  our  method. 

When  there  was  an  idea  to  be  expressed,  after  we 
had  all  discussed  it,  each  one  contributing  her 
exact  shade  of  feeling,  we  decided  on  the  meaning 
that  seemed  best  to  average  up  our  variations. 
Then  we  drew  lots  for  first,  second,  and  sometimes 
third  syllables,  though  most  of  the  words  were  of 
two  syllables  only.  Those  of  us  who  drew  the 
syllable  slips  concentrated  our  minds  on  finding, 
each  one  of  us,  some  sound  of  not  more  than  three 
letters  that  suggested  to  her  the  feeling  to  be  ex 
pressed;  and  then  when  all  were  ready  these  syl 
lables  were  combined  in  the  order  of  the  numbers 
on  the  slips  we  had  drawn. 

For  instance,  we  wanted  a  word  for  the  free,  wild 
feeling  it  gave  us  to  be  out  on  a  dark  night  when 
the  wind  from  far  away  was  tossing  the  tree  tops, 
and  the  shadows  cast  by  our  lanterns  were  dancing 
fantastically  over  the  blown  grass.  We  used  often 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  237 

to  go  out  with  lanterns  in  the  grounds  of  Madge's 
house  in  the  country  just  to  revel  in  this  feeling  on 
autumn  nights  when  the  moon  blinked  and  crackled 
in  the  cold.  We  chose  the  three  syllables  pli  di 
trants,  making  when  put  together  "  Pliditrants," 
We  used  to  shout  the  word  out  into  the  night  and 
it  seemed  to  sum  up  in  its  sound  all  the  aerie  exhil- 
aration  that  we  felt,  like  the  cat  that, 

"Whisked  her  tail  to  the  twittering  moon." 

The  definition  we  gave  it  in  the  dictionary  of  our 
words  was:  "  Children  alone  in  the  night."  I  have 
that  dictionary  still,  denning  sixty-three  of  our 
words,  arranged  as  a  rhyme. 

Our  words  were  all  " secrets"  at  first,  only  to  be 
revealed  to  the  very  understanding  few  and  only 
to  be  made  up  under  the  most  secret  circumstances, 
in  some  very  private  place  like  the  top  of  a  tree  or 
in  a  cave  dug  into  the  side  of  a  sand-dune  or  under 
a  drooping  umbrella-tree  in  the  Park,  and,  of  course, 
my  suspended  closet  was  a  perfect  place  to  make 
them.  They  soon,  however,  became  so  essential  a 
part  of  our  speech  that  we  used  all  but  two  of 
them  with  everybody,  and  some  of  them  are  still 
in  common  use  among  our  friends  and  relations. 
They  were  all  nouns  or  adjectives. 

"Thuka"  was  a  quality  of  color  found  either  in 
green  or  blue  of  farmhouse  shutters,  old  pumps, 


238  UNA  MARY 

and  dump-carts.  It  is  that  peculiarly  comfortable 
blue  green  or  faded  cobalt  blue  that  one  only  finds 
in  the  country  and  associates  with  such  joys  as 
trips  after  loads  of  wood,  bumping  along  "sitting 
on  behind"  the  cart,  ready  to  jump  out  at  any 
moment,  or  helping  harvest  the  corn  and  apples  in 
the  fall,  riding  home  on  the  full,  rich-smelling  loads. 
I  associate  it  also  with  delicious  deep  drinks  out 
of  a  tin  dipper  at  some  friendly  blue  pump  where 
we  stopped  in  the  course  of  a  walk  and  gossiped 
with  the  farmer's  wife,  who  usually  in  the  end  gave 
us  cookies  or  doughnuts  to  eat,  and  there  were  cer 
tain  old-fashioned  doors  we  particularly  loved  that 
were  painted  a  thuka  color.  Pink  hollyhocks  were 
wonderful  with  it,  and  they  often  grew  beside  such 
doorways. 

" Mingy"  was  the  half-exhilarated,  half-giddy 
feeling  one  had  when,  after  whirling  through  space 
on  the  swing  in  the  barn  until  one  had  "  tipped  the 
beam,"  there  came  a  moment  of  absolute  poise  just 
before  the  back  swing,  a  moment  when  the  heart 
almost  stopped  beating — that  queer  sensation  at 
the  climax  of  motion  was  mingy,  and  one  had  it 
spiritually  as  well  as  physically.  It  was  the  calm 
in  the  centre  of  storm  of  any  kind.  It  always  came 
in  the  midst  of  rages  and  panics,  and  then,  if  one 
had  the  sense  to  recognize  that  it  was  mingy, 
one  might  seize  hold  of  one's  self  and  keep  calm, 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  239 

just  as  we  sometimes  at  that  moment  of  poise 
jumped  from  the  swing  to  the  beam  above  the 
barn-door.  One  often  felt  it  in  the  top  of  a  tree 
when  the  wind  blew.  It  was  the  moment  to  let 
go  when  "bending  a  birch"  and  drop  lightly  to  the 
ground,  and  it  was  most  dramatic  of  all  in  a  canoe, 
still  for  a  breathless  instant  before  the  plunge 
through  a  stretch  of  rapids. 

"Dowyow"  was  the  sort  of  calf-love  we  used 
to  see  overtaking  girls  and  boys  in  their  teens 
— it  would  now  be  called  a  "crush" — to  us  per 
fectly  sickening  as  a  spectacle  and  yet  rather  in 
teresting,  it  took  such  strange  forms.  There  were 
frequent  opportunities  for  watching  it  when  we 
visited  Madge  in  the  summer,  for  she  went  always 
to  a  real  Summer  Resort,  and  the  beach  simply 
swarmed  with  "affairs."  The  boys  were  always 
stealing  the  girls'  hair  ribbons  to  carry  about  as 
mementos,  which  reminded  me  of  Mammy's  story 
of  the  little  girls  who  lived  next  a  cemetery  and  al 
ways  wore  such  splendid  hair  ribbons  that  every 
body  wondered  how  their  mother  could  afford  it, 
until  a  day  when  one  of  them  appeared  in  a  rib 
bon  with  some  gilt  letters  on  it  which  proved  to  be 
"Rest  in  peace."  For  some  reason  I  felt  the  same 
element  of  sacrilege  here. 

There  was  another  form  of  love — we  could  not 
explain  what  the  difference  was,  but  it  gave  us  a 


240  UNA  MARY 

very  distinct  sensation  when  we  saw  it;  and  it  was 
again  quite  different  from  the  love  of  people  who 
were  married.  This  kind  of  love  was  very  silent. 
It  had  a  hot,  intense  glance  and  made  the  hands 
tremble.  We  had  only  seen  it  a  few  times.  I  knew 
most  about  it,  for  I  had  once  gone  into  a  room  think 
ing  it  was  empty  and  had  been  utterly  startled  to 
find  a  man  holding  a  girl  by  both  hands  and  looking 
into  her  eyes  in  a  way  that  made  shivers  run  all 
through  me.  It  was  terrible  and  wonderful,  and 
they  were  so  absorbed  in  each  other  they  never 
heard  me  at  all  and  never  knew  I  saw.  This  love 
we  named  "Predalis,"  and  it  was  only  to  be  spoken 
of  with  bated  breath.  Predalis  was  our  greatest 
"  secret "  and  was  only  told  to  a  very  few  after 
they  had  promised,  "  cross  my  heart  and  hope  to 
die,"  never  to  tell  any  one. 

One  of  our  favorite  words  was  "Stowish."  The 
definition  was  "middlish  un thought  of."  In  most 
families  there  is  one  stowish  member,  some  one 
who  comes  near  the  middle  and  is  very  useful  and 
fine,  the  one  who  is  apt  to  do  all  the  (5frd  or  dis 
agreeable  jobs,  but  somehow  is  always  being  over 
looked  by  people  outside  and  taken  for  granted  by 
the  family.  Among  the  days  of  the  week,  it  is 
Thursday,  of  course — good,  conscientious  Thurs 
day.  It  would  never  come  first  into  any  one's 
mind  if  asked  suddenly  to  mention  a  day  of  the 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  241 

week.  Six  and  four  are  both  stowish  numbers.  I 
wonder  if  every  one  gets  an  impression  of  good 
ness  from  them?  I  always  do.  All  stowish  things 
seem  to  have  an  inherent  goodness,  a  Martha 
quality,  and  to  seem  a  dull  drab  in  color. 

Nearly  everything  had  color  to  us,  and  to  me 
most  people  have  always  been  very  distinctive 
colors  that  I  feel  at  once  as  soon  as  I  see  them. 
Madge  was  an  amber  yellow;  Hannah  was  gray- 
blue;  and  they  all  thought  I  was  blue-green.  I  felt 
sure  Una  Mary  was  vivid  emerald  green.  Half 

/  the  population  of  the  world  seemed  to  be  in  shades 
of  brown.  We  none  of  us  ever  wore  brown  if  we 
could  help  it,  for  we  could  not  bear  to  look  the  way 
those  people  made  us  feel.  Real  Girls  were  either 
a  mild  pale  blue,  "baby  blue,"  or  a  rather  acrid 

-  pink.  The  nicest  boy  we  knew  was  gray,  and 
the  next  nicest  was  a  dark  red. 

We  all  three  had  a  very  keen  sense  of  resem 
blances,  not  outward  but  emotional  resemblances. 
It  was  really  a  form  of  symbolism.  We  could  de 
scribe  people  in  terms  of  objects.  I  came  across 
an  old  letter  the  other  day  in  which  I  spoke  of 
some  one  as  being  like  a  dump-cart  driven  by  a 
canary;  and  another  person  I  knew  was  made  up 
of  a  sunset  and  a  market-basket.  We  spent  many 
odd  hours  playing  the  game  of  what  colors  peo 
ple  were — we  almost  always  agreed  on  them — and 


242  UNA  MARY 

the  things  of  which  they  reminded  us.  Una  Mary 
was  made  of  a  crystal  ball  and  a  gold  ring,  while 
Una  was  a  sailboat,  a  pair  of  forceps,  and  a  pic^ 
ture-book. 

To  return  to  our  words.  My  favorite  one  was 
"Trando."  I  had  always  felt  the  need  of  it,  and 
the  first  syllable,  tran,  was  mine.  It  meant  the 
feeling  of  an  unseen  beyond.  In  our  dictionary  we 
called  it  "The  look  into  feeling,"  and  the  best  illus 
tration  we  could  give  was  that  of  a  road  winding 
up  a  hillside  to  a  pair  of  bars  on  the  crest  of  the 
hill  against  the  sky.  The  road  must  lead  some 
where,  and  the  bars  in  themselves  showed  there 
must  be  something  special  beyond.  But  what? 
That  certainty  of  an  unknown  what  was  trando. 

One  also  felt  it  in  looking  down  a  dark  passage 
way  between  houses  or  down  a  narrow,  crooked 
street.  Venice  is  the  most  trando  city  in  the  world ; 
that  is  half  its  charm  for  every  one,  only  most  peo 
ple  lack  the  word  to  express  what  it  is  they  feel 
when  they  wander  on  foot  along  the  tortuous  side 
walks  and  courtyards  that  honeycomb  the  build 
ings  between  the  canals.  Mystery,  romance,  ad 
venture  lurk  beyond  each  corner,  where  one  catches 
glimpses  of  silent  water  sombre  and  rich  as  an  old 
brocade  with  glints  of  gold  and  rose  and  azure  in 
the  sunlight — Venice,  when  I  first  saw  it  at  sun 
set,  a  Dream  City  of  Una  Mary's!  It  seemed  of 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  243 

'her  world  and  like  the  palaces  she  wove,  of  tjie  iri 
descent  substance  of  bubbles — to  vanish  at  a  touch. 
Most  of  all  to  me,  trando  was  the  beyond  feeling 
mountains  always  gave  me.  It  was  the  place 
where  View  lived.  To  Madge  it  was  most  vividly 
that  sense  some  rolling  hills  give  one,  that  the  sea 
is  just  on  the  other  side.  Trando  is  still  a  very 
real  and  necessary  word  to  us  and  to  our  friends. 

"  The  look  into  feeling  is  called  trando. 
Bomattle  is  the  place  where  the  lost  things  go." 

So  they  are  written  in  our  rhymed  dictionary.  Bo 
mattle  was  the  heaven  of  lost  pins,  the  place  where 
the  knees  and  toes  of  stockings  and  elbows  of  dresses 
went  when  they  wore  out,  and  Madge  and  Hannah 
thought  the  flames  of  blown-out  matches  went 
there,  too.  It  was  useful  but  crowded,  rather  like, 
a  neglected  attic. 

Another  word  we  used,  which  has  almost  become 
English  so  many  people  know  it,  is  "Beadle."  That 
we  did  not  make  up  ourselves  but  borrowed  from 
some  friends  of  Hannah's  and  took  it  over  to 
become  an  associate  member  of  our  language.  I 
have  even  seen  it  used  in  a  book.  It  meant  the 
kind  of  commonness  that  is  not  pronounced  enough 
to  be  called  vulgarity  but  still  is  the  type  of 
unconscious  bad  taste  that  makes  one  all  crinkle 
up  inside.  Beadle  people  are  the  only  ones  it  is 


244  UNA  MARY 

quite  impossible  to  know  and  beadle  houses  sim 
ply  smother  one.  We  certainly  were  not  snobs,  as 
some  of  our  most  intimate  friends  were  servants 
and  farm-hands,  but  a  touch  of  beadle  we  simply 
would  not  and  could  not  stand.  Real  Girls  were 
often  beadle.  The  most  perfect  example  of  a 
typical  beadle  person  is  the  wife  of  the  hero  in 
William  de  Morgan's  book,  "It  Never  Can  Happen 
Again."  I  know  just  how  he  felt  about  her.  At 
the  end  of  an  invitation  to  a  church  party  I  once 
saw  this  sentence,  "Acquaintance  making  will  com 
mence  at  nine  o'clock,"  and  it  struck  me  as  the 
most  luminous  example  of  beadle  I  had  ever  heard. 
"Spaily"  was  the  exact  opposite  of  beadle,  but 
almost  as  unattractive,  as  it  had  a  quality  of  pathos 
that  was  deadly.  It  is  total  lack  of  charm  com 
bined  with  a  long-backed,  narrow-shouldered  effect 
beloved  of  English  dressmakers,  with  lanky  skirts 
riding  up  in  front — at  the  time  when  it  was  un 
fashionable  to  ride  up  in  front — not  shabby  clothes 
at  all  or  outgrown,  but  deliberately  and  compla 
cently  made  so.  It  is  a  certain  kind  of  old-maid- 
ishness  that  has  in  it  an  attempt  at  fashion.  The 
same  effect  could  be  given  by  combining  the  wrong 
colors — brown  and  a  shade  of  bright  pink  put  to 
gether  give  it,  or  gray  with  light  blue.  Rooms  can 
be  as  spaily  as  people.  Country  parlors  always 
are  if  the  people  who  own  them  are  prosperous 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  245 

enough  to  make  them  so.  We  had  another  word, 
"  Faxy, "  to  describe  stuffy  parlors  with  wax  flowers 
under  glass  cases. 

The  humiliation  of  my  life  was  that  my  back, 
Una's  back,  do  what  I  would  to  it,  was  always 
spaily.  There  was  something  about  the  way  my 
neck,  with  its  braids  of  hair,  grew  out  of  my  collar 
that  had  the  fatal  look.  Madge's  mother  tried  to 
console  me  about  it  by  saying  that  at  least  it  looked 
like  the  back  of  a  lady,  which  was  only  more  con 
vincing  still,  for  the  worst  form  of  spaily  only 
exists  among  gentlefolk!  Neither  Madge  nor 
Hannah  had  a  trace  of  it,  so  I  decided  it  must  be 
because  of  my  Boston  ancestors  and,  along  with 
my  clothes,  was  just  another  burden  they  had  put 
upon  my  shoulders.  It  was  really  a  fear  of  spail- 
ness  that  was  the  horror  of  their  lives  in  Miss  Al- 
cott's  family  of  " Little  Women,"  only  they  lacked 
the  consolation  of  knowing  what  the  word  for  it 
was.  I  really  found  that  quite  a  help. 

"Loo"  was  a  jolly  word  and  meant  a  state  which 
our  own  possessions  never  reached.  We  could 
achieve  it  only  for  our  dolls.  It  meant  having  just 
what  you  need  to  use  and  to  wear  and  having  it  all 
in  perfect  order,  like  a  soldier's  uniform  and  kit. 
With  us  it  would  have  meant  a  best  dress  and 
hat,  an  every-day  dress  and  hat,  one  coat,  one 
pair  of  rubbers,  two  pairs  of  gloves  and  shoes,  and 


246  UNA  MARY 

brand-new  hair  ribbons — all  the  things  in  perfect 
s  condition,  no  half  worn  outs  or  made  overs  or 
hand-me-downs  about  it — a  state  of  things  as  re 
mote  as  Heaven  and,  like  Heaven,  only  theoreti 
cally  longed  for,  because  hand-me-downs  had  a  real 
charm.  One  wondered  so  what  experiences  they 
had  gone  through  before.  I  was  sure  I  could  tell 
if  they  had  been  sad  or  happy  clothes.  And  made 
overs  were  almost  always  prettier  than  in  their  orig 
inal  state.  They  seemed  really  to  find  themselves 
and  develop  all  their  possibilities,  though  I  must 
say  the  Imp  was  most  scornful  of  them  and  abso 
lutely  frank  about  it. 

These  are  enough  to  give  an  idea  of  what  our 
words  were  like,  and,  except  for  the  few  very  secret 
ones,  we  used  them  with  everybody,  even  with  our 
parents. 

Words  in  themselves  always  affected  me  strongly, 
and  I  remember  one  day  when  the  realization  of 
a  word  almost  overwhelmed  me.  I  was  walking 
home  from  Noah's  Toy  Shop,  that  emporium  of 
joys  "from  a  penny  up,"  on  Fourteenth  Street, 
sucking  an  " all-day  sucker"  and  admiring  a  new 
doll  I  had  just  bought  for  a  quarter.  I  was  saying 
to  her,  "I  hope  I  shall  like  you  very  much,"  when 
abruptly  the  word  hope  popped  out  of  the  sentence 
and  looked  at  me  as  surprisingly  as  a  Jack-in-a- 
box.  Then,  as  I  thought  about  it,  it  seemed  like 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  247 

an  old  and  taken-for-granted  friend  suddenly  be 
come  a  new  and  extraordinary  being.  I  said  it  over 
and  over  to  myself,  Hope,  Hope,  Hope,  and  each 
time,  like  a  stone  flung  into  a  pond,  the  sound  went 
off  into  the  outer  margin  of  my  mind  in  ever-widen 
ing  circles  of  significance  until  I  lost  all  sense  of  its 
literalness  and  could  not  discover  what  the  great 
something  was  that  I  felt  about  it,  whether  it  really 
had  anything  to  do  with  its  meaning  or  was  some 
thing  in  the  sound  and  make  of  the  word. 

When  I  got  home  I  wrote  it  down  to  see  how 
it  looked,  and  still  it  gave  me  the  same  sensation. . 
For  days  it  was  there  nearly  all  the  time,  in  the 
background  of  my  mind  and  led  me  to  wonder 
about  other  words  until  language  became  the  me 
dium  of  a  vast  symphony  of  sound  and  I  began 
to  make  up  combinations  of  words  solely  for 
their  sounds.  I  took  passionately  to  the  verses  of 
" Alice  in  Wonderland" — I  had  thought  them 
rather  silly  before — and  learned  the  whole  of  the 
Jabberwock  by  heart  to  recite  aloud,  glorying  in 
its  richness. 

Rhymes  and  rhythm  became  a  necessity  to  me, 
and  one  night  I  woke  up,  broad  awake  in  the  mid 
dle  of  the  night,  with  the  conviction  that  I  had  to 
write  a  poem.  So  I  got  up  then  and  there  and- 
wrote  it  down — a  poem  of  the  sea.  It  was  eight 
verses  long,  although  only  one  of  them  has  sur- 


248  I£NA  MARY 

vived.  I  found  it  the  other  day  in  the  note-book 
I  began  to  keep  when  I  was  ten  of  Una  Mary's 
"  Feelings."  The  night  I  wrote  the  poem  I  felt  it 
was  magnificent.  This  is  the  first  verse: 

THE  SEA 

"  The  waves  have  risen  wild  and  free 
Like  the  Klu  Klux  bands 
On  the  terrified  sands, 
The  White  Riders  of  the  sea. 
With  a  crash  and  a  rush 
Their  wild  manes  brush 
And  blot  the  sky  from  me." 

Soon  after  this  we  were  given  Scott's  novels  for 
Christmas,  and  from  the  day  when  I  first  opened 
"Ivanhoe"  I  knew  I  had  come  into  a  world  that 
was  my  own.  Scott  knew  Una  Mary,  and  his 
books  seemed  almost  accounts  of  what  her  life  in 
My  Country  would  be  when  she  and  Edward  had 
grown  up. 

How  I  lived  in  those  books!  By  the  time  I  was 
thirteen  I  had  read  them  all,  and  some  of  them  for 
the  third  time.  "Quentin  Durward"  I  could 
almost  repeat  by  heart.  My  father  loved  them  as 
I  did  and  we  used  to  read  them  aloud  together.  It 
was  really  a  family  inheritance,  one  of  the  good 
things  that  came  down  in  my  Boston  blood,  for 
my  grandfather  all  his  life  read  Scott  over  and 
over  again,  and  the  last  book  I  saw  him  reading 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  249 

before  his  death,  at  the  age  of  eighty-four,  was 
"Guy  Mannering";  and  there  are  very  amusing 
stories  about  his  father,  my  great-grandfather,  who 
was  a  Unitarian  minister  and  not  quite  sure  about 
the  ethics  of  novel  reading  in  a  minister's  family. 
They  had  started  a  small  lending  library  in  the 
town  where  he  was  settled.  It  was  my  great- 
grandmother's  idea,  and  all  the  books  were  given 
out  by  her  at  the  Parsonage,  and,  of  course,  among 
their  number  were  copies  of  the  new  fiction  then 
coming  out,  and  "Waverley"  was  one  of  them. 
Everybody  went  wild  over  it,  and  the  minister  felt 
it  his  duty  to  read  the  first  number  to  be  sure  it 
was  a  proper  book  for  his  parishioners.  That 
sealed  his  doom  as  far  as  Scott's  novels  were  con 
cerned.  Each  number  that  appeared  after  that,  as 
soon  as  it  reached  the  Parsonage,  was  seized  by  him 
and  secreted  until  he  had  finished  reading  it.  He 
never  spoke  of  it  and  no  one  in  the  family  made 
any  remarks.  The  book  simply  vanished  for  a  time 
and  then  reappeared  on  the  library  shelf,  though 
his  attitude  about  other  fiction  remained  un 
changed,  and  the  light  literature  belonging  to  the 
family  was  still  kept  in  a  box  in  the  attic,  where  it 
was  read  surreptitiously  by  the  children. 
,  I  still  have  so  strongly  the  family  affection  for 
Scott  that  I  had  a  feeling  of  sacrilege  when  I  over 
heard,  not  long  ago,  a  conversation  between  a  Har- 


250  UNA  MARY 

vard  student  and  a  very  pretty  girl  who  were  having 
tea  at  the  Country  Club.  He  had  just  told  her  he 
came  from  Cooperstown,  where  Cooper,  the  novel 
ist,  lived.  She  replied  that  she  had  never  heard  of 
Cooper,  and  he,  scandalized  at  her  ignorance,  had 
gone  on  to  give  her  a  list  of  his  books,  when  a  light 
suddenly  broke  over  her  face  and  she  said:  "Oh,  I 
know  now.  The  same  sort  of  people  read  them 
who  read  Scott's  novels.''  I  am  thankful,  indeed, 
that  I  grew  up  and  still  am  "that  same  sort  of 
person!" 

At  school  I  had  been  given  drawing  lessons,  and 
at  home  my  grandmother,  who  herself  painted 
exceedingly  well,  had  helped  me  with  suggestions 
about  mixing  colors  and  putting  on  paint,  so  I 
began  to  draw  and  paint  in  earnest,  no  longer  for 
amusement  but  for  the  companionship  of  express 
ing  myself  and  putting  into  visible  form  this  world 
of  Scott's  novels.  I  did  illustrations  for  all  of 
them,  reproducing  the  detail  as  lovingly  as  he  had 
described  it. 

Then  I  discovered  Shakespeare!  I  have  always 
'been  glad  I  found  him  for  myself — just  stumbled  on 
him,  not  knowing  he  existed,  like  Columbus  run 
ning  into  America.  I  had  always  seen  the  little 
red-leather  volumes  in  the  bookcase,  and  one  day 
I  listlessly  took  down  "Hamlet."  I  began  to  read, 
and  Una  Mary  fairly  purred  with  satisfaction. 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  251 

Then,  as  I  went  on,  she  was  shaken  as  she  had  never 
.  been  shaken  before  by  the  beauty  and  the  tragedy 
of  it  all — words,  pictures,  emotions  woven  together 
into  one  perfect  whole,  its  threads  of  the  warp  and 
woof  of  her  world.  That  evening  I  took  it  with 
me  to  the  kitchen.  I  felt  I  had  to  read  it  aloud. 
I  wanted  really  to  hear  the  lines  roll  out  before  an 
audience.  So  to  Mammy  and  Aunt  Louisa  and 
the  cook  I  read  it.  They,  too,  were  entranced,  and 
after  that  when  Aunt  Louisa  had  sewing  to  do  she 
used  to  ask  me  to  "Come  erlong  and  read  dat 
murder  piece." 

I  revived  my  toy  theatre,  a  survival  of  the  Cin 
cinnati  days.  Agnes  had  given  it  to  me  as  a  good- 
by  present.  For  it  I  painted  new  scenery,  made 
actors  cut  out  of  cardboard  who  could  be  pulled  by 
strings  along  grooves  for  their  exits  and  their  en 
trances,  and,  not  satisfied  with  acting  the  whole 
of  Shakespeare,  wrote  plays  of  my  own  for  the 
puppets  to  perform.  Madge,  Hannah,  and  I  pre 
sented  them  together,  each  of  us  being  responsi 
ble  for  the  strings  and  the  lines  of  certain  of  the 
characters. 

From  this  and  the  plays  I  had  seen  in  real  the 
atres  I  was  fired,  of  course,  with  an  ambition  to  go 
on  the  stage  as  a  child  actress.  I  had  seen  the  girl 
who  took  the  part  of  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy,  and 
was  certain  I  could  do  it  quite  as  well,  if  not  better, 


252  UNA  MARY 

and  at  last  my  opening  came.  I  was  asked  to  take 
part  in  some  private  theatricals  in  a  real  hall  and 
was  allowed  by  my  family  to  do  so.  The  rehears 
als  were  thrilling.  At  first  the  Imp  was  a  great 
trouble,  for  he  kept  whispering  to  me  that  it  was 
useless  to  feel  that  I  was  the  Lady  Jocelyn,  that  I 
was  just  plain  Una  and  no  amount  of  velvet  train 
could  change  the  way  my  back  looked.  But  I 
resolutely  choked  him  off.  I  would  be  the  Lady 
Jocelyn  for  that  play  at  least  and  could  keep  my 
back  turned  away  from  the  audience. 

All  went  well  at  the  final  performance.  I  wore  a 
green  velvet  mediaeval  gown,  a  jewelled  girdle,  and 
a  high,  peaked  cap  with  a  veil  floating  from  its  top 
just  like  one  of  the  pictures  in  the  Corcoran  Gal 
lery.  I  said  my  lines  passably,  and  the  real  stage 
seemed  to  me  my  next  inevitable  step  in  life  until 
the  moment  when  the  play  was  over  and  I  stood  on 
the  stage  alone  in  front  of  the  curtain  to  give  the 
Epilogue.  Then  my  Imp  clutched  me  and  I  knew 
I  was  just  tow-headed  Una.  Somehow,  I  said  the 
lines;  they  really  seemed  to  say  themselves,  for  I 
heard  them  going  on  in  the  midst  of  my  misery, 
and  then,  after  what  seemed  centuries  alone  with 
that  sea  of  strange,  hateful  faces  before  me,  there 
came  the  applause  and  the  curtain  began  to  go,  up 
for  the  final  tableau. 

It  was  the  old-fashioned  kind  of  curtain  that 


WORDS,  NEW  AND  OLD  253 

rolled  on  a  stick  at  the  bottom,  and  just  as  it  began 
to  go  up  I  felt  a  slight  twitch  behind,  and  before  I 
could  free  myself  my  long  velvet  train  had  begun 
slowly  and  firmly  to  roll  up  inside  it.  One  of  the 
actors  saw  my  plight  and,  rushing  forward,  picked 
me  up  in  his  arms.  Slowly,  higher  and  higher  he 
lifted  me,  while  every  one  yelled  to  the  curtain  man 
to  let  the  thing  down,  and  the  man  who  held  me 
shouted  to  him:  "You  fool,  do  you  think  I'm  a 
giant,  to  reach  to  the  ceiling?"  How  I  wished  he 
were!  But  when  I  had  gotten  to  his  shoulder  the 
curtain  dropped,  and  all  the  time  the  audience 
quaked  and  roared  with  laughter.  I  have  never 
since  appeared  on  any  stage.  After  that  night 
my  longing  for  the  footlights  was  over  forever. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  SOLUTION 

winter  I  was  thirteen  I  was  startled  out 
of  my  happy  existence  with  Madge  and  Han 
nah  by  their  both  moving  away  from  Washington. 
Madge  went  to  live  near  Boston  and  Hannah  went 
back  to  her  home  in  the  tropics,  where  I  thought 
of  her  in  much  the  same  way  as  I  thought  of  Una 
Mary  in  My  Country,  for  Hannah  always  had  a 
glamour  about  her,  in  spite  of  her  white  pinafores, 
and  her  country  seemed  My  Country  become  real, 
a  permanent  version,  as  it  were.  The  fact  that  it 
was  real  somewhere  steadied  and  stimulated  me 
greatly  by  connecting  my  imaginative  life  with  the 
solid  world. 

Once  more  I  was  alone  with  my  inner  life  and 
Una  Mary  was  lonelier  than  before  except  when  I 
was  writing  long  letters  to  the  other  two  girls.  We 
corresponded  once  a  week,  and  we  all  three  began 
to  write  novels,  which  we  exchanged  in  instalments, 
for  it  had  become  a  necessity  to  us,  perhaps  through 
having  made  up  our  own  words,  to  express  our 
selves  in  words,  in  writing.  Madge  and  Hannah 
254 


THE  SOLUTION  255 

wrote  long,  sustained  narratives,  a  revel  of  romantic 
situations,  for  Madge  was  now  sixteen,  so  really 
grown  up  that  long  skirts,  put-up  hair,  and  matri 
mony  seemed  to  loom  on  her  near  horizon;  and 
Hannah  had  caught  very  realistic  glimpses  of  the 
world  of  emotion  through  the  recent  marriages  of 
her  brothers  and  sisters. 

Soon  after  she  went  home  Hannah's  country  was 
torn  by  a  revolution  and  her  brother  returned  to 
Washington  on  a  very  important  diplomatic  mis 
sion.  He  came  to  justify  his  people  for  having 
dethroned  their  ruler  and  to  secure  the  approval 
and  support  of  our  government.  In  his  trunk, 
scattered  among  his  diplomatic  papers,  were  pages 
and  pages  of  Hannah's  last  novel,  which  he  was 
bringing  to  me,  all  so  mixed  together  that  when  he 
saw  the  President  and  was  reading  him  the  draught 
for  their  new  constitution,  in  the  middle  of  it,  so 
he  said,  came  to  a  page  beginning :  "She  threw  her 
arms  about  his  neck."  I  am  sure  if  he  had  gone 
on  the  President  would  have  been  appreciative. 

There  was  no  doubt  Madge  and  Hannah  were 
real  novelists  and  I  was  very  proud  of  their  work 
and  much  honored  by  being  the  only  person  who 
saw  their  manuscripts.  My  own  stories  were  not 
romantic  at  all  in  the  real-world  sense.  They  kept 
a  half-fairy,  magical  quality,  for  Una  Mary  still 
preferred  the  world  of  High  Adventure  where  the 


256  UNA  MARY 

loves  of  Knights  and  Ladies  were  aided  or  thwarted 
by  fay  and  demon.  Theirs  were  real  books,  fifteen 
chapters  long,  while  mine  were  all  short  stories, 
some  only  a  single  paragraph,  and  all  written  in  a 
metre  that  was  half  prose,  half  poetry,  a  linking 
together  of  words  for  their  meanings  in  sound  as 
well  as  in  sense. 

Una  Mary  drew  back  once  more  into  her  old  life 
with  Edward  in  My  Country,  or  rather  into  a  done- 
over  version  of  My  Country  and  hardly  recogniz 
able  as  the  same  place,  enriched  as  it  now  was 
by  material  and  personages  from  Shakespeare  and 
the  procession  of  Kings,  Queens,  Knights,  Ladies, 
Squires,  Churls,  and  Minions  I  had  known  and 
loved  through  the  pages  of  Scott's  novels;  and  with 
this  return  to  My  Country  I  felt  again  the  over 
whelming  need  of  a  religion. 

While  Madge  and  Hannah  had  been  in  Washing 
ton  my  religious  side  had  been  rather  in  abeyance. 
I  still  prayed  regularly  to  the  Virgin  and  told  my 
blue  beads,  though  I  had  given  up  my  altar  to  her 
when  I  first  knew  Madge,  and  the  rest  of  my  out 
ward  religious  life  had  been  for  a  time  submerged 
by  my  excitement  in  finding  friends  with  whom  to 
share  my  feelings  about  life  and  nature.  Religion 
I  did  not  mention  to  them — it  was  too  personally 
my  own — and  what  their  own  ideas  were  I  did  not 
know  as  they  never  spoke  of  the  subject,  either. 


THE  SOLUTION  257 

Our  nearest  approach  to  it  came  on  the  day  when 
Madge's  aunt  died.  We  had  really  liked  her, 
though  her  path  in  life  had  crossed  ours  very  little, 
and  when  she  died  we  felt  very  solemn  to  think  we 
should  never  see  that  eager,  kindly  person  again 
and  sat  about  not  knowing  what  to  do  with  our 
selves.  The  zest  had  gone  out  of  everything  and 
we  felt  hopeless  and  forlorn  until  I  remembered 
that  when  she  was  alive  she  had  liked  to  watch  us 
when  we  were  playing  Indian.  So  out  into  the 
yard  we  whooped,  being  Indians  with  all  our  might, 
until  Madge's  mother,  utterly  scandalized,  ran  out 
of  the  house  to  stop  us,  really  angry  with  us  for 
"such  lack  of  respect  for  the  dead";  her  attitude  as 
great  a  surprise  to  us  as  ours  was  to  her  when  we 
answered:  "But  we  were  just  playing  on  purpose 
to  amuse  Auntie  up  in  Heaven." 

Our  zeal  was  diverted,  I  remember,  to  a  large 
wreath  of  bay-leaves  which  we  made  for  Madge  to 
lay  on  the  coffin.  She  went  to  the  funeral  very 
stiff  and  important  in  a  white  dress  with  a  black 
sash,  and  was  dressed  in  black  and  white  all  sum 
mer,  greatly  to  her  own  pride  and  satisfaction, 
though  Hannah  rather  cast  a  damper  over  her  by 
remarking,  "That's  nothing;  my  father  and  mother 
have  to  mourn  a  month  each  time  a  Royal  Family 
dies  anywhere,"  and  I,  not  to  be  outdone,  con 
trived  to  wear  retrospective  gray  with  a  black 


258  UNA  MARY 

hair  ribbon  as  half  mourning  for  my  great-grand 
mother,  who  had  died  when  I  was  four  years  old. 
Once  when  Madge  cut  her  finger  I  think  she  was 
less  distressed  by  the  pain  than  by  the  fact  that 
the  blood  which  spurted  over  her  dress  was  "out 
of  mourning." 

I  am  sure  to  all  three  of  us  the  dead  seemed  very 
near  and  friendly,  not  ghosts — they  were  different, 
like  ogres  and  malignant  fairies — but  the  souls  of 
the  dead  who  had  been  our  own  kind  of  people  and 
might  have  been  our  friends  if  we  had  known  them. 
We  were  sure  they  were  close  about  us,  invisible, 
the  color  of  the  wind,  and  in  the  wind  we  almost 
felt  them  brushing  past  us — the  eager,  rushing, 
intimate  wind — trying  to  make  friends. 

God,  as  the  great  ruler  of  these  kindly  dead, 
seemed  near  and  friendly,  too,  and  the  idea  of  Him 
as  a  Being  and  a  Friend  had  grown  steadily  until 
I  felt  a  shy,  wondering  love  for  Him  which  gradu 
ally  became  an  absorbing  passion  as  I  learned  to 
feel  Him  more  and  more  through  nature;  for  in  the 
sea,  the  woods,  the  mountains,  and  the  sky  I  felt 
Him  close  beside  me,  waiting,  always  waiting,  until 
my  eyes  should  open  and  I,  no  longer  blind  to 
mystery,  should  see  and  know  Him.  It  was  the 
strange  sense  of  a  Presence  that  I  had  always  felt  in 
certain  places,  sometimes  sublime  and  often  terri 
ble,  now  become  wholly  good  and  universal,  incar- 


THE  SOLUTION  259 

nate  in  all  nature.  But  how  incarnate?  What 
quality  was  He  that  made  the  world  of  nature  one? 

At  first  I  thought  it  must  be  life,  from  the  blind 
grouping  of  the  crystal  up  through  the  springing 
tree  to  man — God  must  be  life,  and  as  such  I  loved 
and  gloried  in  Him,  until  one  day,  as  I  lay  beside 
a  little  brook  watching  the  tiny  ferns  and  moss  that 
grew  upon  the  bank,  no  longer  marvelling  at  their 
minute  perfections,  for  they  were  part  of  God — 
God  present  in  their  smallest  particle  that  lived — I 
saw  the  curled-up  wisp  of  a  little  dead  fern  and  I 
wondered  what  that  could  mean.  It  was  dead,  so 
it  could  not  be  God,  and  yet  I  felt  in  it  the  same 
divinity  as  in  the  growing  plant;  and  as  I  lay  on 
my  back  looking  up  through  the  trees  at  the  sky 
above  while  I  tried  to  think  out  this  new  problem, 
I  saw  the  clouds  float  by  white  and  tranquil,  most 
divine  of  all.  Yet  the  clouds  had  no  life;  in  a  sense 
they,  too,  were  dead.  No,  God  could  not  be  life; 
He  must  be  something  else  inherent  in  the  uni 
verse. 

More  and  more  it  puzzled  me  to  find  out  what 
He  was  and  I  always  thought  about  it  as  I  painted 
out-of-doors  and  lived  long  working  hours  alone 
with  the  earth  and  sky,  for  landscapes  were  what 
I  cared  most  to  paint — landscapes  and  flowers. 

I  had  found  that  paint  could  do  for  me  what 
making  up  our  words  had  done — express  the  inner 


260  UNA  MARY 

meaning  all  objects  held  for  me  and  give  some  hint 
of  their  spirit.  I  tried  to  paint  not  their  actual 
appearance  only  but  to  catch  the  vague  additional 
something  which  brought  the  tears  to  my  eyes,  to 
give  to  my  painting  a  little  of  the  beauty  Una  Mary 
saw  and  felt,  for  she  knew,  really  knew,  exactly 
how  the  picture  ought  to  look.  She  knew  trees 
and  the  sea  and  sky  as  if  they  were  parts  of  herself, 
and  yet  when  I  drew  them  they  became  pictures 

--of  total  strangers.  I  remember  tearing  up  a  sketch 
I  had  just  finished  of  an  apple-tree  because  I  could 
not  make  it  look  kindly,  and  I  longed  to  paint 
shadows  so  that  they  were  luminous,  as  if  they  were 
floating  lightly  on  the  ground,  instead  of  the 
smudges  of  gray  paint  of  the  right  shape  and  color 
which  for  years  had  satisfied  me. 

It  was  real  agony  as  well  as  joy,  this  effort  to 

„  give  birth  to  the  beauty  Una  Mary  felt,  and  some 
times  by  almost  shedding  life's  blood  in  my  efforts 
I  managed  to  express  a  slight  suggestion  of  it,  but 
when  I  did  the  struggle  was  so  intense  it  led  to  my 
remarking  to  my  astonished  aunt,  "  Power  is  pain," 
a  saying  the  family  teased  me  about  for  years,  it 
sounded  so  pretentious,  though  it  had  actually  been 
wrung  from  my  innermost  heart.  It  was  one  of 
those  times  when  I  had  been  so  rash  as  to  let  Una 
Mary  really  speak;  only  Madge  or  Hannah  could 
have  understood.  I  wrote  the  phrase  down  in  the 


THE  SOLUTION  261 

note-book  I  kept  of  "Una  Mary's  Thoughts  and 
Feelings." 

The  root  of  the  trouble  with  my  painting  seemed 
to  be  Una.  Because  of  her  ignorance  her  hands 
could  not  express  what  I  really  felt,  and  the  only 
solution  seemed  to  be  to  educate  Una  and  try  to 
develop  her  to  Una  Mary's  level. 

One  day  in  February  I  found  a  clover  plant  com 
ing  up  through  the  snow.  One  leaf  was  wide  open, 
daintily  marked  with  crescents  of  paler  green;  the 
other  leaves  still  folded  together,  half  hidden  by 
the  pink- veined  sheath.  In  its  exquisite  dauntless- 
ness  it  seemed  to  sum  up  the  whole  of  spring,  and 
in  the  painting  I  made  of  it  I  caught  for  the  first 
time  a  little  of  what  I  felt,  caught  enough  to  fill  me  ^ 
with  surprise  and  awe — it  was  so  far  beyond  any 
thing  I  had  ever  done  before. 

It  was  so  much  better  than  my  other  paintings 
that  I  felt  I  could  not  have  done  it  wholly  by 
myself.  It  had  in  it  a  little  of  what  I  called  the 
God  quality — that  quality  that  puzzled  me  in  all 
nature — and  I  felt  as  if  it  must  have  come  from 
somewhere  outside  through  me.  It  seemed  as  mi 
raculous  as  striking  a  match  into  a  living  flame, 
and  as  the  flame  was  the  light  of  God,  could  this 
spirit  of  the  clover  leaf  that  gazed  at  me  from  my 
own  painting  be  also  really  of  God? 

Was  it  God  who  had  guided  my  hand,  speaking 


262  UNA  MARY 

through  me  of  a  truth  of  Beauty  that  Una  Mary 
had  only  dimly  guessed?  I  knew  it  must  be  so, 
and  I  began  to  feel  that  I  should  some  day  under 
stand  what  God  was,  God  grown  suddenly  near 
and  intimate  and  to  be  loved  as  I  had  loved  Ed 
ward — now  Jesus — and  the  Virgin,  for  He  was  mine 
to  find  everywhere,  even  in  myself,  no  longer  a 
snatcher  of  souls  or  a  mysterious  vagueness  beyond 
the  mountains  or  the  power  of  the  tempest  and  the 
sea,  but  a  God  who  must  love  us  to  have  given  us 
the  gift  of  Beauty  existing  in  all  things  and  Una 
Mary  selves  with  which  to  see  and  feel  it,  and  then 
through  ourselves  to  bring  it  forth  again  trans 
formed  by  the  God  in  us  to  a  beauty  higher  still. 

Beauty  to  me  became  the  most  vital  thing  in  the 
world,  for  Beauty  was  View,  it  was  trando,  real  and 
yet  unreal,  something  that  existed  not  only  in  the 
places  where  one  found  it  but  glimmered  through 
them,  like  the  sense  of  Beyond  transcending  the 
mountain  barriers,  and  summed  up  in  itself  all  the 
feelings  and  longings  I  had  ever  known;  not  a  pas 
sive  quality  but  a  power  which  was  the  force  behind 
all  life  and  behind  all  nature,  a  power  that  could 
even  work  through  me.  These  thoughts  about 
God  and  Beauty  gradually  accumulated  and  be 
came  sharper  and  clearer  until  on  the  day  when  I 
painted  the  clover  leaf  they  culminated  in  the 
knowledge  that  at  last  I  had  found  God,  the  God 


THE  SOLUTION  263 

who  was  to  be  not  only  my  joy  and  worship  but 
my  pain  as  well  and  my  whole  life  for  years  to  come. 

I  knew  God  was  beauty.  Beauty  was  not  of  God ; 
it  was  God!  To  produce  beauty  was  worth  all  the 
struggle,  all  the  sacrifice  of  which  humanity  was 
capable — once  to  touch  the  hem  of  His  garment 
and  then  die  fulfilled! — the  expression  of  beauty  a 
veritable  " Coming  of  God  on  Earth"  and  the  only 
way  in  which  men  could  find  and  know  Him. 

This  belief  combined  all  the  dreams  and  aspira 
tions  that  had  made  up  my  worship  from  Arcturus 
to  the  Altar  of  the  Virgin  with  the  sense  of  vast- 
ness  and  fundamental  simplicity  I  had  caught  from 
my  father's  scientific  friends.  Here  was  at  last 
the  Primal  Cause! 

Heaven  became  to  me  the  place  of  perfect  beauty, 
and  the  angels  those  who  on  earth  had  known  and 
.  worshipped  it,  while  Jesus,  who  seemed  as  near  to 
me  as  in  the  days  when  I  called  him  Edward,  be 
came  the  link  connecting  me  with  these  masters 
of  the  past — it  was  Jesus  who  translated  them  to 
me.  Hell  was  eternal  ugliness  filled  with  the  blind 
of  soul  who  in  this  life  had  refused  to  see  and  feel, 
their  torment  that,  dead,  they  now  knew  beauty 
and  were  barred  from  sight  of  it  forever,  and  in 
their  company  the  Imp  belonged. 

I  found  my  supreme  earthly  symbol  of  God  in 
the  Washington  Monument.  To  me  it  was  more 


264  UNA  MARY 

perfectly  beautiful  than  anything  I  knew,  and  so 
high  its  very  size  seemed  worthier  of  God.  In  its 
severe  perfection  it  was  more  beautiful  than  a 
mountain  or  the  sea.  They  with  their  faulty 
moodiness  seemed  like  human  beauty,  while  this 
had  a  quality  of  the  divine  as  it  changed  in  spirit 
with  each  shifting  light  or  shadow,  glowing  in  the 
sunset  or  wreathed  in  mist  at  sunrise,  slender, 
sombre,  and  inflexible  against  the  storm,  or  white, 
tapering,  and  aloof  against  the  starry  sky  on  a 
moonlight  night.  Serene  and  strong,  springing 
from  the  earth  and  reaching  to  the  sky,  pointing 
upward  to  the  great  beyond,  a  slender  shaft  of  tran 
quil  aspiration,  all  the  elements  of  pain  and  strug 
gle  purged  in  the  clear  certainty  of  its  perfection! 
Each  morning  as  soon  as  I  got  out  of  bed  I  looked 
at  the  Monument  from  my  window  and  it  became 
the  pathway  of  my  prayers  to  God. 

With  this  discovery  that  beauty  was  divine,  the 
universe,  that  is,  the  tiny  fragment  of  it  which  I 
knew,  unfolded  itself  before  me  as  a  stupendous  har 
mony,  every  element  a  necessary  part  of  the  one 
perfect  whole,  and  I  altered  my  statement  in  Una 
Mary's  note-book,  " Power  is  pain,"  to  "Power  is 
oneness." 

Now  that  my  two  worlds,  the  real  world  and  the 
world  of  my  imagination  were  welded  into  one  by 
beauty,  which  was  the  spirit  of  them  both,  I  began 


THE  SOLUTION  265 

A  • 

to  feel  a  great  restlessness  and  dissatisfaction  with 
w  my  divided  self.  There  were  pain  and  discord  in 
being  two  selves  with  no  real  link  connecting  them. 
It  made  me  fail  in  everything  I  tried  to  do,  for  how 
could  I  express  myself  when  I  could  not  under 
stand  myself,  when  my  two  selves  could  not  under 
stand  each  other  and  yet  were  forced  to  depend 
more  and  more  upon  each  other?  I  was  miserable 
and  felt  pulled  in  every  direction  at  once  and  could 
no  longer  live  an  outer  and  an  inner  life  that  fitted 
comfortably  together  in  distinct  layers,  wholly 
separate;  for  "feelings"  which  had  belonged  only 
to  my  inner  life  were  becoming  more  and  more  a 
part  of  all  I  did. 

My  two  selves  were  no  longer  on  friendly  terms 
— they  began  to  hate  each  other,  and  Una  Mary 
instead  of  being  my  only  joy  and  consolation,  the 
self  with  whom  I  "pretended"  and  rejoiced,  was 
now  become  a  turbulent  volcano,  determined  to 
crush  Una  and  break  through  my  outer  shell;  and 
Una  was  so  joyously  alive  she  began  to  crowd  out 
Una  Mary]  She  was  really  almost  educated,  and 
yet  Una  Mary  liked  her  less  than  ever  and  began 
to  be  as  disagreeable  to  her  as  the  Imp,  until  one 
1  dreadful  day  when  Una  retaliated.  She  laughed 
at'  Una  Mary!  Laughed  with  genuine  amusement 
at  her  serious-mindedness  and  ended  by  calling  her 
"high-flown ! "  Una  Mary  was  aghast,  and  even  the 


266  UNA  MARY 

Imp  was  shocked.  What  was  I  to  do  about  my 
self?  This  state  of  anarchy  could  not  last. 

More  than  ever  I  seemed  a  blot  on  the  world,  the 
only  thing  that  was  out  of  harmony.  Una  Mary 
fitted  into  and  was  a  part  of  the  rhythm  of  beauty, 
but  only  God  knew  that  she  was  there.  This  world 
knew  me  only  as  Una,  a  discord. 

Suddenly  it  came  to  me  as  a  revelation,  the  knowl 
edge  that  I  must  weld  my  selves  together  until  they 
became  one  single  person  and  one  only  before  I 
could  be  in  harmony  with  life  and  beauty;  that  it 
was  because  of  my  divided  selves  that  I  was  un 
happy  and  a  discord.  I  was  two  notes  struck  at 
once  and  they  nullified  each  other.  I  must  become 
one  clear,  distinct  sound,  and  the  way  to  do  this 
seemed  to  be  to  express  through  Una  all  that  Una 
Mary  felt.  All  my  life  I  had  put  the  accent  on 
Una  Mary,  had  felt  she  was  the  real  me  and  that 
all  my  failures  were  Una's  fault;  but  now  I  saw  that 
the  trouble  had  always  been  with  Una  Mary — by 
despising  Una  she  had  made  me  powerless.  My 
whole  future  lay  with  Una;  she  must  be  generous 
and  forgive  Una  Mary,  must  become  her  guide  and 
help  her  to  come  outside.  Then  I  should  be  a 
wholly  new  person. 

This  revelation  came  to  me  one  evening  as  I 
stood  on  a  sweeping  hilltop  watching  the  sun  set 
behind  the  distant  White  Mountains  while  the 


THE  SOLUTION  267 

thrushes  sang  and  all  creation  seemed  one  throb 
bing  hymn  of  praise,  suddenly  stilled  as  the  sun 
sank  below  the  horizon.  Then,  as  the  mountains 
grew  purple  and  the  hushed  leaves  waited  for  the 
night,  a  great,  abiding  peace  came  over  me.  All 
my  longings,  all  my  aspirations,  all  my  struggles 
were  released,  and  I  felt  myself  swept  into  the 
great,  resounding  rhythm  of  all  being. 

Then  the  first  star  came  out  clear  and  hopeful  in 
the  West — Arcturus — and  as  I  saw  it  I  made  a 
wish,  reciting  it  in  verse: 

"  Star  light,  star  bright, 
The  first  star  I  see  at  night, 
I  wish  I  may,  I  wish  I  might 
Have  the  wish  I  wish  to-night. 

"Let  Una  Mary  always  be 
A  living  part  of  the  really  me. 
Not  Una  Mary  and  Una,  too, 
With  Una  Mary  peeping  through, 
But  as  Edward  into  Jesus  grew 
And  God  is  Beauty,  ever  new, 
May  all  the  world  My  Country  be 
And  both  the  Unas  a  new  me. 

"Star  light,  star  bright, 
Grant  the  wish  I  wish  to-night." 

The  wish  came  true,  and  after  that  evening  Una 
Mary  vanished  as  a  being  of  distinctly  separate 
feelings  and  imaginations.  Her  world  became  the 


268  UNA  MARY 

deep,  encircling  background  of  My  World,  support 
ing  and  sustaining  my  whole  life;  a  life  no  longer 
made  up  of  inner  and  outer  circles  that  never 
touched,  but  one  consistent  whole  with  the  same 
depths,  reserves,  and  silences;  but  they  were  now 
depths  and  silences  belonging  to  the  surface  and  of 
which  the  surface  strove  to  speak. 

Life  became  like  a  deep  woodland  pool,  tangling 
the  eye  with  gold-flecked  abysses  of  blue  and 
green,  depth  on  depth  of  impenetrable  color  below 
the  sunlit  surface  where  water-lilies  float  and  chil 
dren  sail  their  mimic  boats. 

That  evening,  like  Kipling's  "Ship  that  Found 
Herself,"  I  was  suddenly  and  for  the  first  time  in 
my  life 

MYSELF! 


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